Now Is Not The Time For Psychobabble

Oh, but it is!  And here’s why:

1) Everybody’s doing it. Get on board or be left behind.

2) For me, it’s just pre-sense. It may not mean anything right now, but it will next year, or next century. You just wait!

3) Instead of calling it psychobabble, let’s just call it poetry & see where it takes us…

FRIENSKIS,

How are you? I am doing better & better. I had a couple of rough months. Somehow I managed to be jolly & positive through Dec/Jan, but Feb/Mar were a little aftershocky.

Don’t worry. That is going to happen here. It’s okay to have feelings. Even BIG ones. Even irrational ones. Irrational feelings are often intuitive timebombs going off prematurely, kind of like psychobabble may just be memories from the future.

I’ve been googling Sen. Duckworth (D-IL) regularly, and I fact check everything that comes out of the great American blowhole. And as soon as I can walk again, I start my “chosen activity” on the frontlines…

…oh did I tell you I broke my foot about 3 weeks ago? I’m so bummed because I had my mile down to 8 minutes, and had wanted to do a 5K in Apr/May. I’m trying to enjoy this convalescence, but …I feel like now’s not the time to be side-lined.

But maybe it is. And here’s why:

1) I did all the hard work already

2) Now is the time to gather strength

3) I’m still in a “period of transition”

*************** A PERIOD OF TRANSITION**********

So, VT, how is your transition going? I hear everyone ask me all the time.

Not. 

No one asks. No one wants to know about it. But I’m going to tell you about it anyway, because that’s how generous I am w/ my experiences on this planet.

Toy Village 2003

The truth is—I haven’t changed much. If you had told me on 12/7/15, the day of my first shot, that I would still look pretty much the same 16 months later…

I would’ve been really disappointed. Once I made the decision to start T, and waited 5 months to get in to see the Endo, and imagined myself as a guy for the first time since I was 19 & almost died because i was really a girl in the world’s eyes…

I was so looking forward to this wonderful transformative journey (which I expected would take about a year). I was anticipating (& fearing) being unrecognizable in the mirror. I was anticipating (& fearing) the loss of my mezzo-soprano singing range. But the excitement was definitely greater than the fear.

Being an older trans guy (46 at time of 1st shot), I’m on a lower dose of T than the average 18 year-old would be. I was in that hormone range where i wasn’t making much estrogen anymore so I was okay w/ the lower dose. Plus I had to think of Moonchild’s comfort level too…

Even though he understood gender dysphoria from living w/ me for years, he was not looking forward to having a husband instead of a wife. I was okay with transitioning slowly if it would help him acclimatize.

Of course, I told you all that from the moment I made my appointment up until the start of this year the “Ma’am bombs” began—

the world called me ma’am so many times, just so I’d never forget : ))

Baby Eloise—she's sitting in the windowsill chattering at birds now 14 yrs old

But I do want to forget. And the world doesn’t call me ma’am so much anymore, but I don’t exactly pass as male either. I think since I had top surgery I’m read first as “teenage boy” but people figure out pretty quickly that I’m older & that means I must be female…

My moustache is trying so hard to be more than a soup shadow. But it just hasn’t progressed much. Even on my lower dose, the doctor thought I should have more facial hair by now.

My voice also hasn’t really changed all the way. Sometimes it is deeper, sometimes it’s just scratchy, and sometimes I feel like I sound just like my old lady-self…

I don’t think people even remember that I’m trans & some of my friends who were so good at trying to use my name and pronouns have just gone back to she-ing and I feel like I might have to come out all over again…

I had been waiting on the changes that would make it easier for my friends to switch pronouns. I know it feels delusional to call someone ‘he’ when they still look like ‘she.’

So...in Feb/Mar I was lamenting my slower paced changes (I’m used to being around younger guys who have goatees & Jim Morrison vocal ranges in like 6 months) and feeling left out, and wondering what should I do about this??

But now I’m feeling a lot better about my failure-to-trans. I feel so much better on T than I did my whole life as an estrogen monster. That alone makes the leg-stabbing worth it. Plus the changes that may not be so noticeable to a casual observer—muscle mass, “downstairs growth”—are enough to ease dysphoria to functional levels.

I have some of the changes I wanted, and none of the ones Moonchild didn’t want—so it’s a win-win! I just have to keep it in perspective, and stay on my own path. Any time I dare to compare myself to the younger guys I come away feeling quite hopeless.

I don't know what this is—2015

And yes, it’s true that I pee in a cup in the car. It’s actually a coffee thermos. I am not a fired-up trans activist, and I don’t want any bathroom drama.** So I practice avoidance. I know some people would say this makes me “not a trans ally.” 

But to me it just means I’m used to being self-protective over confrontational. I recognize that the world has trans compassion fatigue and I’m trying not to push any buttons.

Just reading the room as they say…

*******************READING ROOM: AS THEY SAY************

I read a book a few months ago that I want to delve into in one of my serious Octopus Diary entries. It was the biography of Sci Fi author James Tiptree (who was really a woman named Alice Sheldon). I had never heard of Tiptree before reading the book, but a friend thought I needed to read about him and sent the book to my mailbox.

This was way more than a story about a sci-fi author with a pseudonym. It was very misogynist-feminist/trans-masculine. Not to mention Alice Sheldon, the person, lived a jaw-droppingly privileged & introspective life***, in which she managed to do great things before ending it all in a murder-suicide. 

Unfortunately I finished the book right around the time of the election and it got shoved aside in the sideshowery that ensued. But I’ll write more about Tiptree when I have some art to go with it! Yes! I want to do some Tiptree-inspired watercolors to go with the article. 

Today, you’ll have to recycle this used art with your purple irises.

************   ** & *** ********************

**although I almost had car drama when we were up in Ybor City—I was peeing in my coffee cup & some guy banged on the window. He was the paid parking attendant and I don’t think he saw what I was doing but it was a close call.

***speaking of introspective lives, in response to my FB post about “utopian societies of the future” someone asked, VT, what do you think a utopian society IS? 

And I said, A society that’s more introverted. 

More on that serious topic

Later

In the Octopus Diary

I don't know what this is either but I made it during my nervous breakdown 2014

REVENGE OF EGGKIND

OH HELLO FRIENDS!!!

How are you? 

I am feeling much better, thanks.

I’ll tell you all that I’m much better at handling the noise-of-the-world than I was before.

But the world has become noisy in a different way.

It’s a visual noise, a spider-eye lens crudely smeared w/ Vaseline.

For a moment, following Trump’s teleprompted speech which prompted such praise from the likes of the enemy-media, and which was followed by the publicity tour of one folksy little war criminal named George W Bush…

I felt like I was back in that dystopian world I entered as a sentient toddler—

an ugly place. 

I let fear and anger build up, and because I have no zippers in my skin it had nowhere to go. It burned like a 4th degree mushroom cloud, obscuring all libido, consuming all creative resources…

So I sought some spiritual counsel. I won’t go into detail, because goddammit, that’s private. But I got good news.

I’ve been wondering and planning and strategizing about what I can do to help the vulnerable demos I see losing support & protection all around me. And I finally have a plan of action [that is also private]. 

But the good news is—I don’t really have to do much!! I’ve already done the hard work—and just as I suspected, the work I did was on such a deep level it looked to all of you like I was doing NOTHING. And just as I suspected, I was …doing A LOT.

Aside from the one action I’ve chosen to do, I’ve been counseled to just stay in my cozy Pisces bubble & use words & pictures to activate others; to document the shitstorm as our systems come crashing…

…oh, that’s another thing. We are on the brink of systemic collapse. And this neo-nazi formation may be the catalyst, may be the first domino flicked, but it is not the end result. We are fully cruising in the Aquarian Age and headed for that promised utopian society where things actually make sense. Where class systems have been replaced by social altruism…

…and things are as EQUAL as they can be on a planet of BILLIONS…

But the bad news is—it won’t happen in our lifetime. It will be a bit of a mess until we get it figured out and it will be the social and civil structures that take the longest to phase out. 

I know I’m supposed to be examining how I failed the poor white uneducated population of this country by educating myself and embracing scientific advances and valuing people over profit…

…but it’s not my job to empathize with them and wonder what I did wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. And my only job is to keep creating the wold I would like to live in. That’s what most of us do anyway, without putting too much thought into it. That is another thing that’s changing…

…people are living with more mindfulness & insight. Which sounds kind of …artificial. But we are creating a new way of being, of communicating with each other. We have way more information at our finger tips and we’ve been observing our human behaviour online as we’ve never been able to observe ourselves before. We know ourselves well enough to become an actual Collective of consciousness.

That both excites & scares me, for I’m an older model humanoid who doesn’t necessarily want to mindmeld w/ your precious grandchildren. But I’m willing to try it if that’s what we’re doing…

…mostly I’ll just write about it though…

SO YEAH. I’m feeling better—not all the way good, but far from bad. MY LIFE, as always, is great. I work hard, I play hard, I still believe in the power of the Humanities to get us through the darkness.

But what do i know, I’m just a tranny pervert who pees in a cup in my car because I’m afraid I might hurt your feelings if I use the public restroom. Or that you might kill me.

*******************************WRITING UPDATE

Contrary to what youre thinking, I do not have writer’s block. I’ve been submitting lots of work. Still getting mostly rejections, but those rejections are coming with more constructive feedback, more compliments from editorial staff, even for my long rambling coma-inducing opera-poems.

I’m so excited that poetry is enjoying a moment in the spotlight. A pretty long moment, too. I always dreamed of being a part of a poetry revolution. I was waiting many years as a lonely poet on the internet—asking Where all the poets is?  

And suddenly there they all were! So many of them, so very, very many! And I read dozens of poems everyday from all around the world. Dozens. Some brilliant, some dull as dry turds. 

But I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to read so many minds in this particular format.

I’ll be sharing more poetry, streams of consciousness, and ART here in the Octopus Diary. Soon, and more frequently. I just had to be serious for a moment. I’m going to try to be more serious, as well as comedic. I found a bunch of serious blogs I wrote in 2015 & never posted, and guess what?

I should’ve posted them. I always chickened out & posted some creative writing instead. Because I thought that’s all you wanted. But I know you need the serious stuff too. You’re hungry for it.

And I don’t mind regurgitating it right into your eyeball sockets.

The Sunday Morning Funnies Just Landed On Your Doorstep

FRIENDS & ENTROPIES,

I really don’t care who you are, just listen to my protracted demagogic blog-personality voice:

I am a hypersensitive WATER SIGN so I will get all emotional here in the Octopus Diary. It’s okay, you can handle it, I think. I like to think you all understand where I’m coming from when I share my thoughts & words w/ you. But I know that’s an unrealistic expectation, and that some people just won’t understand, don’t have the Iron Age tools of understanding.

At their direct disposal (crematory of consciousness) garbolic sanitation demolition project. Hero.

HELLO: 

Let me start again by saying: I know I got all emotional and sassy and made broad sweeping generalizations which are a NO in this hyper-woke post-Aquarian tectonic New World Disorder shift of consciousness Age.

And like I said, that’s going to keep happening. In my proven empirical fact-checked zodiac chart there is only: WATER & FIRE.

Zero zilch nada EARTH or AIR.

So, with me you’ll get a lot of this: EMOTIONAL/INTUITIVE/PASSIONATE

And none of this: COOL/CALM/COLLECTED

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen.

Since I got all emotional on you last time, I was actually going to do something a fair & logical AIR SIGN would do:

Write an Adventure in Reality

And, friends, I did start writing an adventure. But then I did something I’ve never done before—I bailed on it! I got halfway into it (or more, 2/3 maybe) and I said ‘I can’t do it anymore!’

The Adventure was, in a nut shell, the tale of Trump & Putin’s romance leading to WW3. It was plenty ridiculous & action packed, but…I just didn’t find it funny. It’s hard for me to joke about all this. Putin is a really scary guy (even though he looks just like my step dad). 

And though Trump will always be a bozo, his henchmen are like sentient fungi come to life, spreading grayly w/ broken capillaries all over my comfort zone.  

I joked & satirized & surrealized & subverted myself all through the Bush years, because I had a firm grasp of what those bozos were about to do next. I have no firm grasp on this slippery executive guano…

…my skullbones once fused together so nicely

now pulled apart & struggling to contain all this new shit

It’s a shell game

So many new things to know

It’s not that I thought I was done knowing new things,

but these aren’t new things & I don’t want to know them again

[Yeah, like remember in the 70s & 80s how ugly we were to gay people, minorities, immigrants, fat people? I’m glad I can’t remember any farther back than that… we’ve come forward a little ways, but now we’re lashing back like a whip…snap]

They’ve been trotting out old George Monkey Bush—the enemy-media has. Look at him! Don’t we miss this little eek-eek good-ole boy chimp w/ his acrylic on canvas atonement oeuvre?

HE LOOKS LIKE A BEADY EYED HAMSTER WHOSE CAGE WAS FLUNG OPEN AND ALL HE WANTS TO DO IS SCAMPER TO THE FARTHEST CORNER AND HUNKER DOWN. HE LOOKS LIKE HE HAS BLOOD ON HIS HANDS NO TURPENTINE WILL EVER REMOVE. SHAME ON YOU (and you, Ellen De Generes for having him on your show) GEORGE W. BUSH FOR NOT EVEN BEING A CHIMPANZEE BUT A LESSER DEMON, A TRINKET ON A PUPPET ON A WIRE IN YOUR VICELORD’s ARTIFICIAL HEARTCHAMBER!!

I HAVE NOT FORGIVEN YOU YET. Our common hatred for clowns does not make us friends. And so my enemy, since I can’t make the adventure any less real I share w/ my friends again—

SHELTER CAT & TRUST FUND BABY

Shelter Cat & Trust Fund Baby Go For A Walk

HEY GUYS (this includes you too, girls),

Welcome to the Blog everyone pretends they don’t read, even though they do!

Sorry I had to post a long winded, lecturey piece in response to the ignorance I saw online last week. I know it seems like I love doing that, but I don’t. I don’t enjoy repeating myself or explaining WHY it’s okay to be who I am to people who don’t CARE to understand.

But I also can’t stay silent about it. And I don’t have a talk show, so I plop it right down here in the Octofish Chumbarrel. AND YOU FUCKING LOVE IT. Don’t pretend you don’t….

SO, in addendum to my previous rant, I want to say that most of the Trans Folks I know are MILLENNIALS. And millennial trans folks seem to have a much better grasp on their mental health than the trans folks from my [X] generation.

I actually don’t know many trans Gen Xers. [Yay! I’m always alone in whatever demographic I occupy!] But I do know quite a few trans Baby Boomers, whose narratives more closely resemble mine.

There was no trans positivity in the 70s 80s or 90s. We were perverts & sickos & we were to be shoved even further back into the closet than the gays, the minorities, or the fat women.

I know that sounds harsh & very un-PC but this is Trump’s America & I’m getting on board (with certain aspects of it.) Not really, but…. you know…

Anyway—I think my trans millennials would appreciate me vouching for their mental health after I was so brutally honest about my own not-so-great mental health. Every TRANS person has their own narrative, just as every PERSON has theirs.

And I’m actually quite jealous of how trans-positive the millennials are able to be.

I just took my dad’s, my brother’s & society’s misogyny and internalized the FUCK out of it, That was the 70s & 80s for you, and if you were lucky enough to arrive on this planet at a later date—hurray for you!

Don’t judge me for being born too soon (or late?) I can’t decide.

***********STATE OF THE YOU & YAWN***********

I really, really HATE the glorification of war, especially by someone who was never in the military. 

War, patriotism, militarism. Those are not good, positive, heroic things. But here we go, padding the military industrial complex for a round of WW3. 

Also think this V.O.I.C.E. registry is a horrific idea, and reeks of a naziism that’s not-so-subtle.

God help us. And I don’t even believe in God.

ALL RIGHT. That’s enough serious shit for now. Here’s what you’ve been waiting for: 

*******SHELTER CAT & TRUST FUND BABY*********(good luck reading it)

Me being masculine (& old)