Ford the Jordan

Drafter's Note: I write this yesterday! Honest. Just didn't get it posted...

It's the last day of the month, and I only just barely have done half of what I set out to do--a post every other day, on average, instead of every day. This, in one kind of light, is failure--but in several other lights, success:
     I wrote far more than I otherwise would have.
     I was encouraged and buoyed by friends and strangers.
     I worked harder at writing than I have in months, maybe years.
But I think the largest success, for me--and the reason that, as of tomorrow (today), I'm taking part in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) with a goal, again, of writing a post each day--is this: that it has made me remember (not in a sais way but in a connais way--see paragraph four here) that writing isn't all pretty. Sometimes the words don't come like I want them to. Sometimes I trip and fumble and have nothing sensical to put down. And the perfectionist in me answers, "Then stop. Take a break. Wait until the juices pool enough to do this well." But any writer--any real writer--will tell you this isn't how it works. You don't wait for it to show up; you work until it does.

Two quick buttresses to this idea that have come to mind recently:
   1) The first is one of my favorite moments in the Old Testament, which I was thinking of earlier this week. The narrative of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea is more familiar--the intricacies of translation will tell you that their sandals hit dry ground. But for most applications in my life, I prefer a similar but different story: those people's children, their sandals having crossed forty years' worth of dry ground in the wilderness, wait on the edge of the place God has promised them. Joshua leads them toward the Jordan River, too strong to ford on their own. They take the first several steps in, and the water remains--slipping stones, sinking silt, frothing rapids. It is not until several steps more that they realize the water isn't climbing their thighs like it should, and several more again before they see bare, wet skin: the waters receded just the same, but this time they had to move first. Had they waited on the shore, afraid of getting their feet wet, expecting the same provision as their parents, they would have died in exile and shame. No less a miracle, but they had to participate to see it happen.
   2) I'm reading a book right now, larger than my Bible and nearly as fantastical. As I was just reading, the hot-and-cold enthusiasm of a character is given detail in his pursuit of poetry: that he had an exceptional first day at it, writing feverishly, pages scattering to the floor in the fury. "He was very delighted with everything he wrote," the narrator explains, and this, in a glance, is what the writer longs for, what I long for. But the second day, begun as the first, ends midway through, the poet becoming stuck on a pesky rhyme. "He struggled for an hour, could think of nothing, went for a ride to loosen his brains and never looked at his poem again."

This is how I am--a fury-writer until my toe hits a stone, and then I am distracted, over-busy, too important. And then I wonder why I haven't felt like writing in weeks. I sit on the beach watching the waves, never wondering about wandering into them. 

So in this one little part of my life, in this small way, I am walking in. I am writing even when the rhyme doesn't work. I am committing, to myself and to a writing community. Will I fall short? Depend on it. But I will write anyway, because like any muscle, the hurt of overworking it feels better than the ache of lethargy.


I cannot wrap up this little Essay a Day journey without a few acknowledgements:
Thanks to my coworker, Sherlock buddy, and writing co-conspirator Zsofi, who alerted me to it in the first place.
Thanks to the EaD community, especially ringleader Chelsia, for their ideas and craft and accountability. 
And thanks to you, who reads this--friend or stranger. Thank you for letting my words take you somewhere, even when the road is broken and winding and littered with typos. 

You Have Sacrificed Function for Fashion Yet Again Only

Truly, there were good intentions. I posted here last on October 8. I suppose when I thought my kitten was dying I figured paying attention to her trumped writing an essay a day. Well. That day turned into a few weeks and here I am back in the orange chair at bedtime, piecing together strange ideas. Tonight they become a poem. 

**

You Have Sacrificed Function for Fashion Yet Again Only

To fail

To flinch

To write the names of everyone you’ve ever known along the inside of your forearms

To whistle a tune you make up as you go

To curl bare toes inside shoes too small

To hand off the pen when you’ve run out of room

To mention celebrity suicide out loud and regret it instantly

To cough

To suffer through campaign ads

To speak too softly amid the crowd

To slide the loose ring in circles around your finger

To let the ink smear in the creases of your knees

To stand here wondering about religious sects

To sigh

To kneel

To rest a minute among coats in the master bedroom

To return down a long hallway

To saunter

To smile

To slip quietly out the door

Harmonize, Entropy, Light

Drafter's Note: I accepted Essay a Day as a challenge, and that is certainly what it's been. A far cry from the official plan, but if I can squeeze one more essays out after this, that'll be an Essay Every Other Day, which I'm pretty darn proud of.

Today found me without much in the What to Write About Ball Pit, so I lifted a page from a college professor: randomly select three words (thanks, random word generator--less romantic and relational than Fuller's jar of words, but it got the job done) and write until you've used them up.

It's that word that catches me, that confirms this is what we're doing tonight, letting the fingers fall and the characters stamp until everything is used up, an erroneous but alluring image of me panting, hands cramping, semi-collapsing across the table. My need to make writing a sport.

I remember the first time I found this word--how many of its brothers do I remember so clearly? But I remember this one: Mr. Stil's biology class, and one of my early tastes of Holy shit I don't understand this in the least. I was that kid, for all of elementary and middle school--with the exception of math, which I had learned to carve out a hole of energy for, all other learning just found a place in my head and rested peaceably. But now, freshman year, with this oddly funny, oddly attractive man at the blackboard, I have been hoodwinked, and this test has snagged me with hooks of unpreparedness and fear. Stil hands the tests back days later, and I am appalled at the number at the top. I skim through, eager to prove another handful of points should rightfully be mine. And there, maybe halfway down the page, is my chance. I had circled something else--a familiar, friendly word--but his red pen has flagged c) entropy. "I've never even seen that word before," I say, all intellectual fifteen-year-old bravado. And I can see Stil's face, more puzzled than annoyed, as he clarifies that it was in the book, so he certainly hopes I have. 

I think this is why I have fond memories of Stil--he was funny and charming, and he understood and accepted that biology wasn't going to be the subject that drove me wild--but still expected me to bring every ounce of intelligence I had to it. Other teachers, surely, had done this, but he did it well. I rose to the challenge with him, and I don't remember what my final score in the class was but I could still sketch you a reasonably passable cell, can vaguely picture the four building blocks floating in a double-helix--the fractures of light that spill across textbook pages and chalkboards ten million minutes ago. 

He knew I was a humanities girl, and didn't try to change that--but didn't let me slump in the back row, either. I was allowed to learn like I needed to, to dwell on the things that caught my attention, but I had to learn entropy, too. He expected me to apply this brain to things that made it wince, to what didn't come naturally. He made me work, and called me out when I didn't, when I started to slide. He taught me to educate myself, to harmonize what I knew with what I didn't, to marvel at the way a word nerd's brain will latch on to the tongue twister of deoxyribonucleic acid, never fooled by impostor answer options again.

Silence

There should be a support group for people like me. People of divorce. I struggle everyday to identify with this notion that I am now divorced, tainted. I know that is not necessarily true, that lots of people get divorced, fail, and try again, however, I feel like I failed and will never recover.

I hesitated, I flinched, I ruined it.

Some days it is not that bad, I go on with my life and with my boyfriend, yes I have a boyfriend. And he can be lovely, though he is nothing like I imagined and some days I notice that more.
Days it gets harder, when I am confronted with his new found happiness, his girlfriend, who is so much more pretty than I ever was. Who, you can tell, is likable and fun and everything he deserves. I try not to hate them, to be devastated by the postings of love, when she claims she has found her soul mate in him. I found him first.

I have no right to be upset, this is my own fault and after dealing with you for 7 years, he deserves to be happy. Don't ruin it, don't message him, don't text him, don't care.

He has moved on, technically so have you, though I am sure that I dwell much more than he does. Why not, I have regrets, real regrets, tangible regrets that I want to run away from on a daily basis. To buy a one way plane ticket to somewhere foreign and just be for awhile, quietly.
I wish I could tell what I really wanted, to see him to hold him to leave him to say goodbye. To burn the dress, pawn the ring and be done. He was the first that I let in, how do you erase 7 years? I can't I will always love him because he was the best part of me for a very long time.

I knew I would divorce, which is never a good starting point. I feared marriage because of my parents, because of my family and I resolved that I would fail.

Either way you are a statistic, it cannot be avoided. I am a statistic of divorce.

Begin again.

The return of the prodigal. I am behind on my 30 days. Pain and discomfort came in and slayed me. On my face shackled by my weakness I rethink the past few years. I used to charge at challenges. Rise up to confront. Push to overcome. Crow with pride and victory. Beat your chest, scream that song. Never give up. Don’t break.

Life evolved. Joints broke down. Confidence cracked. Failures took their toll.  I step up, but not all in now. I THINK I can do this but doubt lingers.

Time goes on. Age has a hold. Knees are shot. Pain is to be avoided. If I push too hard, I won’t have enough to finish. Mediocrity is a laudable goal.

2014-New joints. Body rising. Time to cleanse my mind. It’s ok to make me tired. It’s ok to push hard. Sweat is my friend. It’s fucking necessary to push hard! Don’t be afraid of the struggle. Rise up. Step into healing and new strength. Believe. Breath.

Begin again.

Never Single

We are leaving a wedding, driving down deserted Maine interstates, watching the way the trees pummel across the outer reaches of the high beams. We talk the way you talk in a dark car on a long drive at the end of an emotional day, where no topic is out of reach and no sidebar is too long tangential.

We talk about this woman, our friend, who is even now alone with her husband in their house, a different kind of dark. We talk about our own histories, loves, losses, the things we thought we learned already. We talk so much I forget about the bag of Swedish fish in my purse, tucked away for a mid-ride surprise.

I say something about being single, and she makes a noise, something akin to a harrumph. “My husband says you’re never really single,” she says, “unmarried, maybe, but never single,” and even as we keep talking my mind stretches and curls around that idea like a cat. I don’t remember where our conversation went to from there—forty-eight hours gone, but the emotions of the day had swamped my brain with saline leaving little room for anything else.

Anything else but this: that no one is ever single.

I have my blood family—relations from Vermont to St. Louis to Oregon—who remind me of where I come from and where we are going, who pass names and genes and character on to a new generation of towheads and tomboys who will play Princess and Pioneers, who will have loves and losses and lessons of their own. After months away, I come home into a strange sort of peace—not sliding into a glove, exactly, but stepping into my mother’s kitchen, which is a thousand times better. Come Christmas, there will be too much food to eat and a surfeit of wrapping paper in every corner, but I will be my own self in a way I am nowhere else.

I have my local family here—the nieces and nephews who have lost the quotation marks I used to put around them, the marriage I casually study and hope one day to mirror, the faith and trust and welcome of tested and proved belief. On their couch, at their kitchen table, I find the warmth and breadth of people who have seen every angle of your crazy and love you without reservation, not in spite of it but because of it. People who accept every stumble and mistake, but also lift you to the next challenge, the next lesson.

I have my gaggle (no better word) of girlfriends—some married and others not—who laugh and cry and watch silly movies with me. Some prod me toward what might make me uncomfortable, some secure me, some let me speak into their lives as they speak into mine. Some teach me dance moves, or perch by my stove to watch how onions and water and spices transform into velvety soup. Some just sit with me, in coffee shops or dark cars, and share life in a thousand words.

I have relatives, churchgoers, neighbors, Facebook friends. I have coworkers, cowriters, cojourners—and those that cheer me on from the sidelines. Adam is right—even in the instant, sitting next to Sara barreling down 295, I know he is. I’m many things, but single isn't one of them. 

Robbed!! Accompanied by an emphatic fist shaking

"We were robbed!!!" No this was not spoken by the woman who came home to a kicked in door and missing her television. No, this was not spoken by the kid who came out to find his car window smashed and stereo gone.

This phrase spoken around the US can always been heard on any given Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. The sound of your precious team losing a game they should not have lost to a less than worthy team. This loss is devastating, could not be more black and white. Truly as it is usually the fault of the man wearing black and white that lead to the demise of your precious record and possible playoff seating. Not to mention the all important fantasy league, how will you ever beat your office rival now with T.J Lang out injured. 

But let's think about bigger issues that face the NFL and their players on a daily basis.

How terrible it must be for Marshawn Lynch, unable to talk to the press, only making $5 million, when he is clearly worth so much more. The agony of it all, no wonder he eats so many skittles. But while we are focusing on the Seahawks, who have been robbed so many times, how can we forget of the constant struggle of having a quarterback who just might not be black enough. Or a quarterback, who just cannot get a high five, despite an excellent throw.

These are the real issues people. 

Why do we liken sports plays to crimes? Robbed, really? Millionaires against millionaires playing with a ball, the only one robbed is the viewer, after all it is only a game.

Etymology is not destiny. A short rant.

Sometimes when I try to engage in discussions with people who disagree with me on the internet. And sometimes when I do this the person I'm speaking with will drag up dictionary definitions and the etymological lineage of a particular term I am either using or that we are discussing.

Now, as a writer and poet, I have a deep love and vested interest in etymology. It can provide wonderful context and a rich sense of history to a word or discussion about that word. But as a word nerd who holds etymology very dear to their heart I resent it being used as evidence in a disagreement.  It's a cheap and inappropriate ploy. Here's why.

Calls to etymology are a distrustful derailment technique. They deny the way the other party uses words and assert the authority of past uses of those/that word/s. It's basically a pedantic version of sticking one's fingers in one's ears and singing "la la la. I'm not listening."

But let's take it further. The implication here is deeply unfortunate. Someone who makes this call to the authority of etymology is not only refusing to listen to the way the other person's using words, but they are making a stand for meanings and concepts to never change. That's right folks, this use of etymology implies that the speaker/writer supports continuing the use of out of date meanings for in modern contexts. This is one of the mechanisms by which oppressive the verbal tics of history get carried over.

Beyond that, it's just unrealistic and comically Sisyphean to cling to origins and historical meanings and ways of doing things. Yes, there's much value in using them as starting points for how to communicate and live our lives. But we will always need to find new ways to communicate. The context of the worlds we live in shift and along with it so should they ways we use our words and tools.

Rage Rant (all I have time for before my haircut)

Sometimes I rage for no reason at all (or at least for no reason I can immediately discern). Right now is one of those times. The minuscule shortfalls of life feel like personal vindictive misfortunes laid out by a vengeful god. It's a good thing I don't believe in god because my anger would make me a very poor believer.

Acceptance of anything feels just out of my reach and all my joints are swollen with anxious fluids. My ankles feel just about ready to pop. And fuck, today was a good day at work. This collapse into seething is sudden and vicious and I am beginning to feel guilty about even feelings this way. I hate myself for letting it get this far. Blaming this body and its shortcomings has always been the easiest course of action to manage. I hate my hands for being dry and my fingertips for bleeding.

I've started to envy the people on tv who always have a reason when some awful feeling crawls inside their body. I wish there was always an answer beneath every outburst I feel might come spilling out of me. I just feel angry. There is no reason to it at all.

I can never observe myself with an anger like this. I can only be with that anger. There is not room for noticing what kind of person I am. And as much as I have fantasized about releasing the pain of self-consciousness I am scared of what not noticing myself might cause.

Even now after I have escaped the suffocation of my work environment, have scuttled away to the safety of a cafe and am sitting somewhat comfortably I still feel like my heart might be a volcano and that my dry hands could smash clean through a forty piece china set. I want to punch every motorist in the balls because one car came too close on the way over here. I want to give up entirely on the belief that good exists in anyone.

Again I blame myself for the venom. I think "I shouldn't have had so much diet soda" or "I should have drank more water" and I sometimes I just get exhausted thinking about how to attend to all the implications of the concept known as "self care".

A Lover's Epistle

That jade earring and your neck were the first things that caught my eyes.
Then your gate, then your tears, then your email thanking me for noticing your heart aching in the breezeway of our college. You know how fall turns from crisp to wet in a moment in the Pacific Northwest? One day the leaves were golden and the next they were pinned to the ground. My heart fell like that. Dark bars couldn't stay open long enough, and I could've walked from one end of the city to the other just because. The lighting in every room was warm, womb-like. I wanted to crawl inside the nook of your arm, be cradled in your embrace. I resisted for as long as I could, only linking arms once to walk to the bus to return home after a night drinking cocktails with you in a place I'd never been to before. You remember it was named the Virginia Cafe? "Virginia is for lovers" they say.

Hide with me in the stacks of the bookstore; let's walk the aisles of the library in our damp clothes and not look for books, just touch them. I'll pull your scarf around my neck--it's spring green and I won't be able to get rid of it many years later, even though it is stained and chalked-full of dingleberries. Meet me behind the school in the hours of dawn, as if we are teenagers. I can't stay on my friend's couch any longer, and this body feels like its going to explode and my soul is going to race in all directions to reach you. Walk me back to your bed and... let's just sleep.
I want to be anchored by the weight of your arms.

Birds are out the breakfast table window: jays crack open the morning, hummers dive and dip for the sweet nectar you've made. Waves of bushtits flock to the camelias, and I don't notice them because there you are before me, so basic with your breakfast and coffee, getting ready to go to school. You say we can do this and go further than we ever imagined, and I don't believe because no one has told me about the possibilities of knowledge, wisdom, and love. Love is to be mistrusted. Love is impermanent. Love is something you cannot choose to do, it just happens. See? It happened to us. And so we struggle with this because you know it can be built upon, and I am at odds with that idea. If it's too difficult, I think, just get the hell out. I move in, and difficulties befall us almost immediately.

Remember when we broke up and got back together and broke up and got back together and broke up and got back together and... Do you think, as I do, that was part of our process to getting here? The reinforcing of the house we were building was why we could withstand what would come: the stress of different graduate schools, the lovers in between, the many miles between us, the gulf in our hearts, addiction and goddamn cancer. Who would've thought that so many little moments would bring us here, to this beautiful, intangible behemoth we've created.

Take me ten years later to where we are now, on the couch before dawn with our coffee talking about the complexities of the world, our classrooms, our students, and I'll reflect on the many Octobers we will face, the celebrations not only of our birthdays, but our marriage and our survival, and the first time I saw the shape of your neck, that lucky piece of jade hanging from your ear.

Its love.

A Love Letter to Books

You have brought me in from the rain, from the wind and enveloped me in warmth. The sunshine has erupted from the lightened clouds, no longer burdened by the girth of moisture that is now weighing my own clothing. Welcomed, wrapped in scents that can only be described and understood by a lover, of pages, of words.

Only to be understood as the calmness that overtakes us in the afterglow of passionate, exhausting sex. A loftiness that carries you from aisle to aisle and never takes on the burden of shopping but of exploring.

Softly running my fingers over thousands of experiences, occasionally gliding over the slick spine of a title, while weighing the implications of plucking it from it's resting place, disturbing it if only for a moment. It is a moment to savor, the crackling sound that occurs when you have chosen, the scent that seems to waif up to you slowly, a gift for you, a sign you have chosen correctly. Fingers dance across the page, as if to absorb some of it's beauty, learn it's secrets.

This can occur multiple times in one visit, for there is so much to see, to touch, to have. You try not to be selfish as you are momentarily brought back to the world when a like soul reaches for your next prey. Thankfully, there are many and no one is robbed of beauty today, only for an instant do you ponder what others are considering when staring at the abyss of possibilities, but soon a new glimmer catches your eye and you are transported.

It is older, rougher than your first choice, a harder life of being used but loved. A feeling of a stubble, a few days old not yet softened by age, but still handsome and sexy. You must have him, take him home and find the perfect place for him.

Too soon it is time to leave, you take your treasures home and are grateful for the experience that has somehow lightened you and brought joy that cannot be replicated.

The Fosters will melt your heart! (a review)

Last month my partner and I started watch The Fosters on netflix.

It has some problematic elements (like siding with the cops, sappy lingering on teenage romance, and comically flat portrayals of poverty/non-middle-class people) but if you're a sucker for Very Special Episodes then you should definitely watch this show. Every episode is very special. Just like all seven of the principle characters. The Fosters addresses many real life issues that other light hearted family shows are unwilling to associate themselves with.

I was particularly impressed with this show's portrayal of rape and the social aftermath and personal trauma that it causes. I've also been impressed with the way that it portrays the subtlety with which most bullying and exclusion happens. While it is still made more obvious for the show, its presentation is more subtle than I have seen before. It's much closer to the realities of discrimination.

All that said, it's an incredibly schmaltzy show that knows how to stick its tear-jerking claws into your heart strings. The writers are masters at making you think the worst is coming and then softening the dramatic blow so you feel sweet sweet relief (in fact I suspect one of the cliffhangers of the most recent midseason finale will pan out this way). The turn of events can also surprise with very dramatic stuff that seems to come out of nowhere and hit you in the guts.

Just based on the amount of principal characters and the vast array of diverse and subversive topics it covers, The Fosters could have been an awful mess of cute faces and progressive Hallmark moments. Diversity Soup if you will. And I'm not gonna lie, it feels a bit like that int he beginning. But by the 5th episode you are fully in love with every character and you physically twitch when they make the wrong choice for loving reasons. Which is basically what drives the plot of this show.

You watch it for the characters. Because you love them, pretend they are your friends, and want them to be happy. The characters and their motivations all ring pretty true and the actors work exceptionally well together. The way they avoid, sublimate, and misread their stresses and anxieties is painfully realistic. Some of the "drama" of the show is definitely played up in a way that is unrealistic, but that's not really what you watch the show for right?

Also for a show that centers around a lesbian couple and their family, we see a whole lot more of the teens doing sex things than we do the moms. I think that what The Fosters need the most is more sexy lesbian mom sex. This is my biggest critique of the show. Not enough gay sex.

I guess my point here is, if you liked watching Boy Meets world and My So-called Life and if you get tired of every LGBTQ show out there being "gritty" and "edgy" then this is the show for you. It doesn't turn away from tougher issues but still leaves you feeling good about the world. Enjoy!

PS: I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum in this review but if you want to read more about the show and don't mind spoilers Autostraddle has some amazing posts about it.

Exposure

1979. I am bare-bunned and squatting at the top of the driveway in front of my childhood home. I'm curiously watching the space between my soft folds of my baby thighs waiting. My moms say that I thought it was funny to poop at the top of the driveway and watch the little turds roll down its steep grade. I was exposed and curious.

Creative nonfiction works in a similar way, I reveal something about myself that others may not reveal. No because I think it's "shocking" and I want your attention, but because I'm not ashamed about what it might say about my character at the time of the incident or the event. I expose myself because I've changed; I reveal myself because I know there are others who do not feel comfortable with such a reveal, but they quietly nod because they've done the same or have felt the same. They don't want to feel alone with their experience. Neither do I.
I may not see their nods, but I have felt what my readers have felt. The first time I read an essay by a woman who had two moms I was enamored. The first time I read a book of essays by children with LGBTQ parents, I knew I had a community. I finally knew I wasn't alone.

I sat with a young woman last night who told me about her graphic rape. I told her about the time I was raped and included that I was promiscuous when I was young, and that I am now so thankful for that time. Just because I was promiscuous does not mean I should've been raped, just because I loved the intimacy of sex does not mean that anyone had the right to abuse me. We ate ice cream and talked about church and boyfriends and writing, and an hour or so later she also admitted that she was promiscuous. My exposure allowed her to open up and reveal something personal about herself because she wasn't alone, and perhaps she, like I once did, felt that she deserved what happened to her because she also enjoyed sex.

I'm not afraid to admit what I've done and how its changed me.
I believe in exposure.

Saturday morning, 2014. Sitting down to a bowl of oatmeal in my breakfast nook, I asked my partner which essay I should read at the Holter Museum tonight. There will be an author showcase and I have choice: read the essay that recently won a Notable Best American or read a forthcoming essay that will be published in 2015.
"Your kidnapping essay is kind of graphic," my partner said, "and a bit depressing for an audience at an art museum."
I guess it is. Having rewritten the kidnapping on paper and in my brain so many times it's become old hat. I only wince at the moment I tell the reader about how my police record says my assailant bit my nipples, and that I didn't remember that moment. An uncomfortable warmth seizes my shoulders as a write this, but that's only a fraction of a second in the whole narrative.
"Well, it's not like my journey with cancer and my post-surgery body is any less graphic and depressing..." I say.
"True."
We decide that I will read the newer essay, not because it exposes so much of me, all essays expose so much about their writer's character and place in the world, but because it's new, it's resolution is one that is a little more optimistic. It's argument is one that is pertinent right now as so many states change their stance on marriage equality.

Exposure is necessary for community building. I am not just a teacher in a classroom, I am human. My body is marred by living boldly, by engaging with a sometimes dangerous world. My character has changed, my body will change, my beliefs will change, but I will not be afraid of exposure on the page or on the nude beach. Though I may not always be fully comfortable with my body, my stories, my history, I will always believe in exposure.

HOME

Home is where the heart is. Home is where your walls come down. Home is warmth and safety. Home is what we run for as soon as the day ends.

Home is the smell of your skin and the silk heat snuggled up next to me in the dark. Home are those quiet noises you make in your sleep-those cuddle sounds that soothe me like a lullaby past bad dreams and battle scars.

Home is the base of who I am. Home is honesty, not a place to hide but a place to see. Home is discovery at any cost of my own core, the motivation that makes my heart beat. Home is God and I in a deep conversation with my spirit.

Home is always with me. Home marks me so strongly that I can close my eyes and be instantly there. Home is the smell of cookies and lotion and aftershave. Home is the sound of laughter and the deep color of blue eyes.

Home is the street I grew up on. Home is the odor of the gymnasium mixing with the echo of cheers. Home is the bench where I counted my change to buy candy. Home is our childhood laughter ringing in the alleys.  Home is the sound of a train echo at night with wood smoke in the air.

Home is the orange of hunting season. Home is the crisp frozen oxygen of a below zero morning. Home is the soft breeze of a summer night. Home is the mountains at any temperature calling out to the atoms that form my body.

Home is sometimes slower to catch up. Home is always on time.

This is home.

Accomplishments

Have you ever doubt your accomplishments as much as when you are applying for a new job? A humbling experience, applying for a job, it is hard to remember that these job descriptions are broad, umbrella descriptions.

No one has a mark for every form filling box on the application, but you feel like you should and you hate yourself a little for not being able to.

Perhaps it is because deep down we desperately want the job and are suddenly faced with the realization that we are lacking as an applicant.

Special training classes? Nope

Special licences? Nope, well Food Handling Permit? Still nope it's expired by two months.

What makes you remarkable? Nothing that reflects positively to an employer who only has 5 minutes per applicant. Apply and move on because you do not qualify.

How does a simple question have the ability to make us feel so belittled and as a failure? Is it because our self esteem is already low and then the blankness is a mirror of everything we did not do. I apply for the job already assuming I did not get it and then I am not disappointed when it happens.

Failure cannot surprise me and I already feel I have.

Write is right.

Writing is an infinite act. Grab a moment, slow it down. Blow up and call out micro events in that moment. How it smells. How it feels. Highlight background details- Lighting, sounds. Enable someone to peek in and participate in something. Enable MANY someones to take part in that moment. As long as a written word is in print, time is frozen. Poof- the all-powerful force of constant change that drives this world is interrupted. Even if the print is destroyed, as long as the story lives in a memory, time remains at a halt.

Writing is a sacred act. Spirit released in a communication stream, running and mixing free. Writings can pass age barriers, language barriers, religious barriers, laws, taboos, fears and poverty. Ideass to brains. Prayers to hearts. A communion of souls. Dreams to the world.

Writing is an athletic act. Bending thoughts, stretching limits, reaching out. Running through comprehension at blazing speed. Forming worlds, building futures, destroying walls, crushing barriers.

Writing is an honor. 

Thank you for the honor of sharing these words.

Hard Rituals (in which I resolve to keep my gender's yellow safety on)

My partner and I moved to Oakland from Seattle In January. And having cycled in both cities I have to say that it often seems like nobody in Oakland wears a helmet when they're riding their bike*. Now I totally see the appeal in that. I see cyclists wearing funky hats and rocking kick ass hairdos. And I kind of envy their freedom. Especially since (when properly trimmed) I like to coax my own hair into a something between a pompadour and a mohawk:

This hairstyle really can't survive being stuffed into a helmet. Despite how awesome it would be to ride around looking fly and feel the wind move through my bouffant, I don't feel safe when riding without my helmet. I feel like I would look more like me if I stopped wearing one. But I think I would stop acting like myself if I decided to stop wearing it. 

Wearing a helmet is part of my politics and process as a cyclist. It shows that I believe in prevention and preparedness when it comes to taking risks associated with moving through a world made for cars on something that is distinctly not a car. It's bright yellow dome is an advertisement of my concern for my own safety and my awareness of the risk I am taking on. It shows that I know how to take care of me.

Last night my partner and I had one of our first serious talks about the possibility of me taking hormones (inspired by our new favorite TV show). When he asked me how I felt I took a long time and gave my answer as an incomplete list of feels (lists help me cope):

Complicated

Attracted

Conflicted

Frustrated

Ashamed

Scared


(to continue onto the gnarlier parts of this post visit Wryly's blog)

Pitting: myself against the system

Today at work I sweat so profusely that the sodden cotton of my work shirt started chaffing against my armpits.

Usually I arrive to work sweaty (from the bike ride). With only five minutes to change before clock in, I peel off my street clothes with a relief I'll quickly smother with my "uniform". I'd like to say that putting fresh clothes into my sweaty body is my least favorite part of the workday. But I'd be lying. Theres something about being paid poorly to work that makes each slightly unpleasant task seem like it's the worst thing you do. It's a negative meditation technique I think. Keeps my body sharp and my mind off the numbing crawl of time spent on the clock.

I'm a sweaty person by nature. And I swear that I am just getting sweatier and sweatier as the years go by. But usually once I've been working for a half hour most of my bikesweat has dried. And I just sweat a bit throughout the day from doing my customer service work. That sweat accumulates throughout an 8 hr shift and by the time I clock out I'm grateful to change into my still slightly moist-pitted street clothes. Which I proceed to make even sweatier will a quick-as-I-can-make-it ride home.

This morning a customer and I went through an extremely stressful transaction before I was even able to hit the 30 minute mark (a cascade of system/equipment errors were mostly at fault) and my sweat glands got kicked into high gear. Which is where they stayed for the rest of the day. Today was an anomaly. But I pretty much sweat my way through two shirts on a workday anyhow.

Now I know I could probably avoid so thoroughly dirtying as many garments as I do on a workday by riding more slowly. But riding slower goes counter to my style. and its means spending 10 more (unpaid) minutes doing stuff related to work. And at just a scrape above minimum wage, they ain't paying me enough to smell like roses or do work off the clock. It's pretty fucking lazy, but I see my pitting as a quiet and revolting yet beautiful sort of resistance.

Viva

It’s funny how an everyday activity can become a waymark for your journey. I got my hair cut today. As usual it took me forever to decide what I wanted. But unlike past experiences I picked what I liked this time without getting buy in from 25 of my friends. I chose something appealing, updated my wife so she knew what was coming and then went for it.

I was also pleasantly surprised when I got there to discover I am now confident enough to put the brakes on the hairdresser. In the past I might have just sat there and streamed a creative line of cuss words through my head. Today I asked for better blending on my bangs and questioned where the shave met my longer hair. It was positively empowering to work it through and come out with a cut I liked. Although I am not shy, in the beauty arena the lion in me has been known to turn into an ostrich.

In a society where so much regret over lost youth constantly assails me, I am refreshed and invigorated by my day. I chose my gray hairs as my highlight color and I am not afraid to voice my choices in this arena. Viva la mature!

What You Don't Say in the Speech

I married off my best friend yesterday. Of course, I use that verb like I was somehow central in the marrying, when in fact I was just holding her bouquet, or straightening her train, or filling her champagne flute. I gave a speech, but I did not speak words of covenant or ceremony over her and her husband. I did not walk her down the aisle, but I gave her away in the way women have always done: quietly, and with tears.

Thirty-six hours before, her mother and I talk across the marble island of her childhood kitchen, two glasses of wine and twelve years of friendship set between us. "You're unrepeatable," she summarizes, and I say this is true of her daughter, too. She recalls angles that I did not see, bonds forged before I could fully feel them. I remind her that depression is, at its root, utter selfishness--seeing nothing but one's own darkness. I could not see until Sydney told me how my dark was bleeding on to and through her, and it was in saving her that I saved myself. So when I say my best friend saved my life when we were eighteen, it isn't hyperbole.

And these are the things that do not find their way into my speech. You don't bring such demons, leashed and shackled and beaten as they may be, into the glowy carnival light of a reception tent, the hum of happiness nearly palpable at your throat and fingertips.

With her mother nights before, your palm on the cold marble brings you back and you remember your forehead pressed to shower tile, contemplating how hard you could manage, how able you would be to crush your own bones and drain slowly out of the world. But in this happy tent there is no place for that thought, and you don't find it again until later.

Here in the tent, you say things that are equally true, and more powerful than those bleached-out memories. You say that you knew you'd have to lose your best friend to her husband, but you'd assumed it would hurt. No one told you it would happen so smoothly, so naturally that you wouldn't notice until it was done. A pain outweighed by sweetness. Faces blurred not by wine but by joyful tears.


How often does the father say, "I'm not losing a daughter, I'm gaining a son"? Poetry I had loved but not fully understood until now. I was afraid of losing her--a truth I had buried in to-do lists and put-on busy-ness. But in the embers of the night, when I call her new last name and both of them turn toward me, I see the truth of it. What is lost is overcorrected by what is gained--not a second person, but a couple fully balanced and filled out by the other. My best friend as she was always meant to be, her best friend as he always aimed for, the both of them together as a united and singular thing. A love let loose into a world that in return will try to darken and crush and drain it--a love in need of allies and defenders, maids of honor, best friends.

Back to School: a journal entry

At 7:45 on Thursday morning I had to clean out the rotted food in our broken fridge before the repair man came by and noticed how rancid it was. After a rushed job of tossing jars and produce bags into a hefty bag I hopped on my bike ready to whizz away to my volunteer gig that started at 8:25. Too bad my tire was flat, and the ride share service I usually rely on was not working at the time. I finally got there at 8:40 after calling my partner and having him send a car to me from another ride share service. I arrived late just in time for action.

This week I started volunteering as an in-class writing and reading tutor for a local Oakland high school. I chose this program because of it's integrated vision. It gives individualized attention to students during school hours and its methods are built off of a respectful student-centered "meet the writer/reader where they are at" philosophy. So I don't have to worry about 'motivating' my student to get a good grade (unless the student cares about that, which most do).

Right now I am working with three students, who for the sake of anonymity I'll call Marco, Emma, and Brent.

Immediately after I arrived I was assigned to work with Emma. She had trouble looking at me. She fidgeted frequently. I think felt shame/embarrassment about the very small amount of work she had done so far, but also about the kind of work she thought she would do. I think, based on what she was telling me, she is going to write about thoughts of self harm, among other things. Which is some heavy shit indeed.

I wondered very briefly about talking to her teacher about what she told me. But for the moment, for this week, I want to keep her trust. And as a person who regularly contemplates self harm I believed that it was only thoughts. I hope I'm right. I feel some regret about this decision and I made a promise that if she mentions it again I will let her know that those kinds of thoughts can be very serious. Let her know I care about her well being and ask if she want help finding a teacher or a counsellor to talk to about those them.

But that resolution was made long after she and I interacted. Most of the time when I am working with these student writers I ask questions, listen, and write down everything they say (as much if it as my slow hands can catch). Afterwards I hand over the sheet of what I transcribed and say "look how much work you got done!"

(to continue reading visit Wryly's blog)

Allen's Treehouse*

When I was fifteen my bother had a saw fall on his head from 20 ft in the air. I don't remember if I actually saw this happen or not but there's a clear picture in my mind of what happened and I remember thinking he was dead or that surely he was doing to die. My brother is not dead. Though they did put several staples into a considerable gash that was smack dab in the middle of his hairline.

My brother has always been interested in beautifully doomed ideas (not that he'd ever call them that). During his teenage year he'd blather incessantly about plans for a perpetual motion engine. I loved him for that.

The saw dropped from a bucket of tools he was hoisting a up to the platform he'd jury rigged between the two douglas firs that loomed over my dad's garage. Allen had set up a complex system of ropes and pulley's in order to bring up the tools and the doors he'd salvaged from the clutches of condemned buildings.

Nothing brought more color to his face than encountering a sturdy old thing he'd found a new use for. (I look forward to growing old with my brother). He was going to build the entire treehouse out of the heavily beveled planks that sat in old frames and had, without humans, lost their vocation. It disappoints me deeply that my shame-prone, teenage-poet self never noticed how lovely of  project he'd embarked on (though I guess nobody starts out a good poet huh?)

Sometimes we, we being he, myself, and our little sister Ariel, would climb up there to play cards together or just to get away from our parents for a while. Nothing against our parents, but we lived in a small house. We were all post pubescent or in the full throes of it by that point. And kids over a certain age just feel some relief knowing there's a place in the world where adults the age of their parents can't get to.

This was not a tree house for children though. At nearly forty feet up the climb was physically strenuous and probably too dangerous even for us. You'd arrive at the top pretty winded and surprisingly grateful to have something solidly geometric and level for your body to rely on. It as never not scary for me. Though I think Allen was never afraid. Sometimes I think  he never is.

It was a paradise up there. Seriously. It only takes thirty feet of climbing to reach an altered state. And us being the super uncool straight edge kids were were (I think I was even afraid of drinking beer at the time) it was the most badass we got to feel. When school let out for summer we took our binders up and threw them all the way down.

But one day in August a strong gust of wind blew in, brusquely tossing half our playing cards onto the neighbor's roof. That malicious chunk of wind also knocked loose a door that had yet to be strapped to anything. It hit Ariel on the shoulder and head pretty hard, and she decided never to climb up there again.

I still went though. Still dreamed with my brother about how good it was going to look with all those unhinged things brought together against the wind and in spite of gravity and expired purposes.

But when he dropped that saw on himself, and was rushed to the hospital in need of metal teeth to hold together the new mouth he'd almost opened in his skull, our parents got scared. And we stopped trying to make lofty things out of old openings and rusty hinges.

The treehouse waited half finished and lonely for about a week. Then a bunch of raccoons braved the heights and started a family up there. The last time I climbed up (without my parent's permission) the whole place smelled like shit and animals.

Three years ago the city had my family cut those trees down. And now whenever I visit my childhood home there's too much sky. I have no idea what happened to the treehouse of old doors. I like to think it's ghostly opening still hangs up there, 20 feet above the mossy roof of my father's garage. But the wind probably blew that away too.


*as with all memoir, the exact details of this piece are subject to vast amounts of creative misremembering and some pretty shady guesswork.

shhh

Today is a day I have nothing to say

I am home, snuggled in

let my weekend begin

My work is all done

I’m ready for fun

I know it’s not deep

But I need my sleep

It’s maybe not right

To go easy tonight

But that’s what I’m doing

Got nothing else brewing.

Bad Morning

I know that I am supposed to be writing essays and all, but yesterday was brutally busy. I was running up against a grad school deadline. I ended up writing a much more in depth essay at the end of a day that had too many small errands and not enough time to take stock of what I'd done. Today I am tired, depressed, and empty of the familial intimidation an approaching deadline offers. And so when I sat down to write something this afternoon only poetry came out. Sad exhausted poetry.

Important note: I don't usually feel this way



Nothing feels more like belonging than
sleep. This flat-tire, rancid,
broken-refrigerator morning bullies me
with its unfulfilled comedy. I awoke
too full of excuses to cough up anything
like laugher. My love life's leftovers crust
over my eyecorners. So I rub the itch
of conversations unfinished. I have
no tincture for this. Weary
sets into the bones like
black mold ribs bend
and prickle. Even breathing
becomes another excuse
a nebulous bitter flinching. I think,
maybe, if I make an incision I might
be able to find out where the issue is,
or maybe instead of cutting through that
sad shiver of oatmeal, I could drown it out
where the silver-necked
ducks are diving, confident
after the squirm of fresh and lively.

An Email

There is an email in my inbox. Of course there is, where else does one locate emails.

The subject, re: 94, clearly spam. I won't open it, but I can't delete it.

It falsely says it is from Jess, a blatant lie, she didn't send it. I know this, but I can't delete it.

It seems like a strange thing to hold on to, something not even real, not a memento but something that only perpetuates a tiny thought, a whisper really. "Maybe it didn't happen."

I find myself thinking of her at odd moments, watching a movie that shows someone like her, a makeup commercial and remembering the only reason I own eye shadow is because of her, and even though it has been years and years what I bought with her is still what I buy even though I never wear it.

It hasn't even been a year and yet it feels like eternity, a loss of what we used to share, secrets, memories, a future. One of us still gets one, but it will always be lacking in some way. I will not say what happened to you, it doesn't matter, not here.

Schrodinger's cat in a convoluted sense, by not opening the email I cannot definitively say that it is spam. It is currently in limbo of being real and fake.

There is an email in my inbox, that I cannot delete and will not open.

Just for tonight…

image courtesy of NBC News

Congratulations to Idaho. I just got done watching the video of people coming out after getting married. I admit, it chokes me up. I don’t see the downfall of society. I just see happy people, in love, celebrating their lives. And for once I am defensive and a little ornery. I wanted to post how happy it made me and put an addendum on of ‘’if you don’t understand or like it or think we are going to hell or yadaayadayada..SUCK IT…seriously just go screw yourselves. Because the innocence and joy of that moment is so pure, I am not ready to let you ruin it for me.”

Now I am usually much more peaceful than “SUCK IT”. I try not to only live a ‘gay’ life, but a ‘Christian’ life, a compassionate life, an aware life. As a matter of fact in one of life’s great ironies the only times I guess I actually dwell on my ‘gay’ life is when all the haters and folks who are trying to ‘save’ me constantly bring it up. Seriously, I might forget all about it and just be another little round girl in love if it wasn’t for the constant social friction over the issue.  It’s really pretty stupid.  I don’t question why they sleep with their ball scratching, toe picking spouses so I don’t know why they wonder wander into my bedroom. I have news for you. It’s mostly Top Chef, Yukon Men or Agents of Shield and a yogurt with occasionally a little naughty thrown in. I would imagine your abstinent teens are living a much more exciting life than two tired wives.

I will let myself puff for a while. I am sure that I will get back to my peaceful self. I have a saying about any two people being an asshole on the opposite side of issues still is just a meeting of a bunch of assholes. And I try very hard to control the asshole that dwells within. But for today, just for one night the asshole in me is smiling and I admit it, I am joining in.

photo courtesy Gaymarriage.jpg, wikimedia commons

caution, the doors are closing

I am often trying to make eye contact with strangers on the train.  These transient folk, sealed shut in their transport pods, eyes fixed on glowing screens, are nearly impossible to connect with.  I try to make eye contact with them, because it’s fun, and because the payoff is high: a fleeting understanding between animals.  Wild beasts recognize one another through momentary stares.  Though we herd ourselves, we are wild; we crave eye contact.  Every few seconds I raise my gaze and assume my most yearning facial expression – the space between my brows creases, corners of my mouth turn up slightly – and scan rows of seats for a partner.  Most strangers refuse to acknowledge my gaze, though I know from the twitch of their lashes that they see me; they simply tuck their chins tighter into their chests and shift their hips away from me.

Look at me!  Acknowledge my existence! You humans, you drones, you bitter drooping savages, show me the life that flickers within – just a pinprick, a droplet of blood smeared on crumpled tissue will do.  Just a smile reflected in a dark window will do.

The two loneliest places in the city are crowded bars and commuter trains. The former is true because you can’t hear what the fuck anyone is saying and if you did hear what she were saying, it would be so steeped in flirtatious snark as to be devoid of meaning.  Empty words as precursors to empty sex.  (Note: I love both of these empty acts because I myself am empty inside.  Vacuums beget vacuums.  But that is for another essay.)  Commuter trains, though, generate a special tone of loneliness.  The tone is barely audible – merely a whimper, like the peeps of a hearing test – but with incredible sustain.  Here, we are inert bodies.  Here, we are scattered planets who’ve lost their surplus gravity, only rationed enough to hold ourselves together.  The seats of the train are microcosms of life – stay within your designated area, do not allow your luggage to encroach on the space of another, turn your eyeballs inward, and never ever divert them outwards.

Look at the window, you creatures of habit.  Watch as existence blurs at eighty miles per hour.  See the crimson smear of struck passengers on the rusted tracks ahead. Imagine yourself nothing more than a red concrete streak, and then remember that you have words and thoughts.  Now share those, please, with me.

There are so many beautiful beings around me.  I see them; I see the cogs ticking, see their jaws clenching and relaxing; I see their lashes sag towards their laptops and point up towards the gray ceiling.   Say hello.  Touch my arm.  There is a girl.  There is the girl I see every day.  I smile at her on the platform while we wait for the train.  She smiles back and adjusts whatever skirt she is wearing that day.  She wears skirts every day.  On her feet she wears shiny-soft leather boots with cowboy heels, the kind that slope towards the toe.  She smiles back at me.  Our eyes dart from one eyeball to the other, to our lips, to our brows, to the movement of our chins.   We hold hands in our minds, I think.  Then the clanging bell rings, the engine approaches through a whorl of ancient newspapers, and the fragile thread snaps.  We look at our laces, enter the train, and find our seats.  My thread still reaches for her.  I see only her boots three seats down from me.  I taste the cherry color like cola in my mouth. I feel the leather in my hands, malleable; I feel hints of her toes through the leather.  I feel her feet in my hands and wonder what kind of face she might make if I traced her arches.  Reality crumbles for an instant on my tongue.

Mountain View.  Mountain View station.  Now approaching… Mountain View Station.

I reassemble myself and check to see if the girl, that beautiful girl with whom I’ve never spoken, shows any sign of what has just happened between us.  But no – she is too busy slipping a bundle of books into her tote.  She stands up and walks down the aisle.  I walk behind her.  I am already compiling To Do lists for work, when I notice her left boot as she steps onto the platform.  Her heel quivers ever so slightly. I feel her smile through the back of her head.  We are still holding hands.

Someone mutters How to be a Complete Wreck in Five Easy Steps.

Photo by Alex Simand

--

Alex is a Creative Writing MFA student at Antioch Universtiy Los Angeles and a Canadian expat living in San Francisco.  He writes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.  He sometimes shares his musings and meanderings on his blog. 

Critique of Michelle Goldberg's article in the New Yorker's August issue

So this afternoon I read Michelle Goldberg's What Is A Woman: the dispute between radical feminism and transgenderism.

Not pictured: all of the fucks I tried not to give but ended up surrendering anyway

It absolutely reminded me of reading Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs two years ago.

Both styles of writing employ the self same "subtle" tactics that make their biases seem more legitimate/natural without actually stating those biases. As a fan of bias-disclosure this bugs me.

For instance, Goldberg gives specific visual and physical detail to the majority of the radical feminists she quotes or shortly profiles. The trans advocates who's voices she leans on are afforded little of these humanizing characteristics. The only trans people who get detailed descriptions are either throwing their support behind radical feminist or have decided to de-transition.

This schism in representation is particularly clear when she profiles the rightfully identified "Abusive posts [proliferated] on Twitter and Tumblr" made by allegedly trans activists. None of those "trans activists" are humanized with physical description. Goldberg mentions a photographic threat but chooses to focus on the knife in the photo rather than the person holding it.

In the very next sentences we're given a friendly amount of context about Lierre Keith. She has a name, an outfit, a well described hairdo, and we get to know what she does for a living. Only after all of that personal information does Goldberg obfuscatingly say that the activist group Keith is a part of: "D.G.R. is defiantly militant, refusing to condemn the use of violence in the service of its goals."

Consider the visceral difference a you as a reader feel when reading an actual threat in contrast to the feeling you get form reading the distanced language with which Goldberg describes the unspecified "violence" condoned by D.G.R. For me this exposes a bias in the writer's own notions. It shows me who she is willing to grant leeway and give the benefit of her doubt. It shows me that she considers some violence to be worse than others. Now I don't know if this bias in her language is done intentionally or not (though with Levy I assumed it was unintentional).

But in the craft of fiction this is how you set your readers up for a polarization. It's how you create  Good Guys and Bad Guys. The Good Guys get detailed and compassionate descriptions and yes, sometimes do vague sorts of violence to the Bad Guys for the "greater good". The Bad Guys are usually only shown in the graphic throes of committing violence with no additional context.

In this article acts of violence are associated with both radical feminists and with trans activists. However the polarizing presentation of that information drastically changes the way the reader will receive and process that information. This article is not designed to humanize trans people or trans activists. And it's more than just the polarizing way she (refuses to) characterize/s trans activists. In the third paragraph of her article she makes the misstep that dooms any possibility of trans people and their experiences being validated by her writing.

She states: "Trans women say that they are women because they feel female--that, as some put it, they have women's brains in men's bodies."

Not only is this an excruciatingly basic reduction of the experience most trans people have, it's erases trans women before the piece has really begun. This erasure may not seem entirely evident to non-language nerds.

Let me show you what I mean:
Trans women don't "feel like women". They ARE women. Reducing someone else's explicitly stated experience as what they "feel like" shows a huge distrust of that person's reality.

Think about it this way:
Say you had a headache or a medical condition, and you said to a friend who you were supposed to meet for lunch that you couldn't make it because of the uncomfortable reality of your health was preventing you from attending. And then imagine this friend, instead of trusting that the pain you felt is real simply said "I guess if that is how you feel." and hung up.

Instead of just nodding and accepting it as true when a trans person tells her, Goldberg responds condescendingly with "well if that's the way you feel". It's rude. It shows that Goldberg does not trust even the explicitly stated experiences of trans people.

Yes it acknowledges those experiences. But it degrades them categorically. It marks those experiences as impossible to exist as a shared reality. Because if it's a feeling someone else has, then you don't have to accept it or feel it too I guess.

This distrust and assumed falseness is echoed in Goldberg's use of the world "transgenderism" throughout the entire piece. As if the identities of entire swathes of people under the trans* umbrella were just some -ism. Ism, which google delightfully defines as "a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy, typically a political ideology or an artistic movement." In other words a lifestyle.

Being transgender is not a fucking "lifestyle". Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it common 20 years ago to hear homophobic people talk disparagingly about lesbianISM and the "gay
lifestyle" (okay okay I know people still do this but I live in a queer Mecca). To me reducing transgender folks and there experiences to the realm of an -ism is really just an echo of the rhetoric that straight people use(d) to ostracized and delegitimize gay and lesbian people.

Much as I would love to I won't go into refuting the many and mostly flawed or anecdotal points Goldberg tries to pass off as evidence that TERFs are in fact being persecuted by trans people. Others have done so already. And I believe my views on the exclusion of trans women from radical feminist spaces has been clearly stated (summary: it's complicatedly wrong).

This post was an examination of how Goldberg's biases seeped (or perhaps were intentionally leaked) into the craft and style elements of this article.