Pathological Pravda

FRIENDS, RUSSIANS:

Happy Goddamn Fucking New Year.

Unlike most of you who eschew new year's resolutions because you won't keep them anyway, I always make resolutions & stick to them.

For instance my resolutions last year were A) to forget more things B) to submit quality writing and get it published.

And I did that! All year long. I got more stuff published in 2016 than the previous 2 years combined. And boy--did I forget a lot of stuff. I can't even remember all the stuff I forgot last year!

[For my new friends (and Russians) who are wondering why I would want to forget stuff--I have one of those perfect biographical memories like MaryLu Henner and I really needed to clean out my brain, make room for all the highly classified data that's incoming

But I can still remember everything if you ask me by date---ie, what happened on Oct 9, 1985? (It was a Wednesday & we were working on the play 'Antigone' in my high school theatre class). But as far as remembering the painful details from each calendar square of my life? I'm purging some of the hurts & judgments & emotional propaganda I've been feeding myself since…1985.]

So what's on the docket for VT in 2017?

A) Retrieving my sense of humor from wherever I left it in 2014. I'm sure I won't find my sense of humor in the condition it was when I abandoned it, but I KNOW I will need a funhouse lens through which to view the nouvelle regime. I am scared shitless and know that is when levity is most essential. But I don't know how "leviticous" I can be about it. Plus I'm so unfunny now, I worry that I may be getting Alzheimer's. 

[Alzheimer's is my new thing to be unreasonably paranoid about. It's always something--sinkholes, blood clots… This year I will find every reason to believe I have early onset dementia. Is this really happening? Maybe not.]

2010 character: The Majestic Text-mouth Sparrow

B) This doesn't need repeating but --Writing, submitting, seeing more work in print. I actually feel really weird whenever I have a poem published. At first it's thrilling--yay, someone appreciates my words! But then it's a scary out-of-comfort-zone heebie jeebie vulnerability. I'm not cut out to be a person, let alone a person with a name. And cred. But I've worked my whole life to occupy this out-of-comfort zone, so I won't give up just because America isn't great yet, or I'm losing my mind.

C) Do more art. I don't need to say it but sorry I did no art in '16. That will not happen again.

D) Weaning off as much single-use plastic as possible. We were doing pretty good with this for awhile, then our cats destroyed our cloth grocery bags one by one & suddenly we had a cabinet full of plastics again. If we are saying good-bye to environmental protections for awhile, I want to contribute as little as possible to the shitpile.

[Of course transitioning means--syringes! Plastic ones! Unreusable disposable waste that usually gets incinerated. But I refuse to throw them out. I've been using them for watercolors and other constructions. So expect some needle-art this year : )]

E) Owning my transition. I'll never be super masculine, but I want to feel comfortable thinking of myself as male. I was such a boy when I was a little kid, and even up through high school I dressed femininely but was gruff & tomboyish as ever. And then something happened after high school…life without a net…and I felt this horrid obligation to play the role of female, and pretend to enjoy & be fine with it. And now that I've been released from that obligation it is still hard not to feel guilty when I think of myself as "he"--I let everyone misgender me because I don't want to be one of those militant "delusional" trans people who disavows all gender constructs.

I just want to pass as a guy and live a quiet life w/ my mate. I don't want to demand anything from anyone, but I need to demand of myself that I FORGET the forced femininity. And the guilt and the hatred and the overflowing misogyny I drowned in for decades. Once I do that, I know passing will come naturally.

Other than that, I have no "trans chores" this year! 

What else? Right now I'm training to do a run. I'll probably start with a 1K or even 5K if I'm feeling strong enough. Back in the days when I was crying so loud & uncontrollable that i thought it would scare the neighbors, I started running around my house, trying to calm myself down. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I was running for hours. Hours, friends & Russians.

It felt awful at the time, but now I'm a pretty good runner for an old curmudgeon. I ran a 9 minute mile this morning and next week I hope to do it in 6, 'mmmmkay?

All right….that's all I have to say now. I hope everybody's year goes well…I mean, really well. If we all need to join forces we will. Until then, I'll be doing all that stuff up there ^^^