DOTS!! and Dash

HEY GUYS!!   HEY FRIENDS!!   HEY PEOPLE!!!

After five decades of planeting with you ,You’d think I would know your preferred nouns by now. But I don’t.  You’re still the mystifying organism known as Humanitor. 

But it’s okay—I misclassify myself on occasion too. I’m one of you & though less mysterious than you I’m still not fully solved.

*****

It’s not the New year (new Decade) yet, but I’m desperate for change so I’m going to elasticize a bit

past Thanksgiving to the knowledge that the Internet (and social networking) was the strangest & most magical & also least wholesome experience I could’ve ever imagined in my life;

I think in 2009 I proclaimed Facebook “more enchanting than attending one’s own funeral” and I meant it. it was a blast and it was more entertaining than television, or my real introverted life before the extronet;

for me being alive on the internet was more lively than going to a party in real life. and that’s…not as sad as it sounds, it’s hard to see people having fun in real life when I’d rather be home writing reading singing or just about anything.

So this has been quite an enlightening, evolutionary, revolutionary decade we’ve spent together & I think we’ll look back at it & pat ourselves on the back for being such brave magicians.

The Gentoos perform their own version of The Crying Game

***************** BUT WAIT

I haven’t written enough about being trans here, and I apologize.  When I started this momentous portion of my life, I thought it would be more newsworthy : ))

But my change has not been as drastic as the younger (& same age as me, in fact all other trans guys I’ve seen) and it has puzzled me, and my friends, and my doctors. But I changed more this year than in the first 3 years on T combined. I’m finally at a plateau I can live with without wanting to murder the person in the mirror.  I love my post-post-post modern pubescence!!!!

I never expected to be Aquaman, and yet I felt like him at times this& last year. My T was high then, but it’s high now. I never, never, ever understood the female hormone cycle, no matter how many times I read about it in Cosmo or a doctor explained it w/ charts & all. I just never got which fluid was in the beaker at which time of month. And why it had to affect me so much [??]  I know that’s problematic, but I hope you understand. 

Anyway, I’ve never been good with hormones. They’re like little foreign languages flowing through my endocrine system.

I feel pretty good gender-wise, though.  And that’s something to be Thankful for as we bypass all the turkey talk.

The Gentoo Emperors — Teduardo, IO Pine, Cayden Haydenson, and Susie G (full biographies to come)

I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that sometime in 2014 my brain broke and its probably not going to return to the way it was. I’ve adjusted to a different level of foreboding that tells me something absolutely catastrophic is going to happen all the time. It took five years to calibrate my new levels of foreboding w/ PKD-approved reality. But…

…I’m still not sure something catastrophic hasn’t already happened???!!!?? 

Anyway, I tried to fix this many ways, including yoga, fitness, all the healthy stuff that I was told to do by well meaning folks

and then had to feel like a huge failure when I couldn’t live without medication any longer.  (I no longer feel bad about this—I’m old and brains go bad.) I just worry about my liver now. But let’s not start a hypochon-CON.

I’ve had a good life and I know for sure there are enough good people out there, even if I can’t talk to them regularly.

Pixel gets in on the act

THIS YEAR…I did what I’ve wanted to do since 11-8-16. I lost hope in people. I gave up on life. I know, I know…I’m a rich, crazy, asshole who can do something like that…that’s partially true…but a little exaggerated : )) Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it if you have many real world commitments…it’s a feral adventure…and be sure to have the support of angels (living and other) around you. 

I had to unconsciously face some conscious [biases?/terrors?/glitches?/some of which were not even my own] and that sounds so easy but nothing was labeled and all the pie was in uncharted territory,

the soft innards leaking past the tinfoil...mmmm, pie.

There is no 14-year-old girl here. Nor any mama. Your dumb pie will land on the wall way above my head.                                        

No papa bear eating toast, but there was a jaguar spotted swimming across the channel.

Misuse my words and treat them as you would my torso when you thought it was yours

and it may be funny but I hope it’s also a big load off your…

…..

…..

….

shoulders.  [There are no puns here! Only double thrusts and ironic jabs; so sharpen or grow up]

Muchi gratz to Matt Groening for learnin' me to draw a proper bun!

******************AND THIS!!!

I’ve always known what everyone wants to know (as soon they get away from you & with their friends) is all the sexual stuff.  I encourage everyone to do their own research on the effects of testosterone & estrogen  [freud missed 

the boat when 

he didn’t guess it could flip over]

I was going to do a thing on transitioning bathrooms, but it wasn’t very exciting. I never was a fan of public restrooms, even as a lady. And let me tell you, no matter how strongly you identify as male, the women’s restroom is a luxury you give up when you pass too well as a guy. The lack of privacy is a bit alarming, speaking as a human of either gender who is accustomed to stalls or peeing in a cup in my car : )) But I think the most bizarre bathroom experience was running into my brothers in there at a wedding! I quickly ducked into a stall so I hope it wasn’t as awkward for them, but thank fuck that stall was open : O

Usually men’s restrooms are darker and quieter than women’s. That’s nice. But women’s rooms smell better! That’s about all the bathroom data I could gather. I hope that was entertaining enough for you.

WRONG!!!!!!

With the help of colorful dots, medication and Eeeyore, I feel better than I did when I decided to give up hope on people (March-ish). I think the pendulum will strike a less vertiginous balance, though I’m not sure it’s done swinging in all directions…

…which is to say I’m still 115% for Free Speech. Especially for artists and whistleblowers. I had to wrestle with my own peanut gallery of voices with the question of someone’s right to incite violence using hate speech, after the Australian guy went to NZ and shot up a bunch of Muslims and then claimed prominent world leader DT’s rhetoric as his inspiration,

[ I wish I knew more about clauses and addendums about gagging potential dictators. Did we not clausify this stuff after WW2—what was the verdict on Free Speech then?]

Can he shoot someone on 5th Avenue and get away with it? The only thing I see in my perfectly conscious and wide awake mind is YES.  And that’s not a the Tiptree-approved reality I saw myself growing ripe in.

Anyway, I know there is a faction of free speech activists who defend it just so they can get away w/ promoting their hateful nationalist racist sexist agendas. 

I hope this is not us, Miss Question Mark/

                                 Madame Asterisk!   << misgendering someone else is kinda fun!

************ IN CONCOLLUSION

Are you wondering why I keep talking about the internet and the social networks in the past tense? As if they are something I enjoyed at one time, but not so much here and now?  Well, I’m bout to deliver a premature new years resolution for the whole decade of the 20s — yay The Twenties! Let’s all be Dadaists together (or separately)—

My resolution is to be on the internet less! I’ve gotten down from a steady 77% to a nice comfortable 44%. But I’m gonna crank it all the way down to 11%. 

An 11% internet life is all I can handle from now on : )) and that includes this blog too! 11% Octopus, I hope you understand. I am thrilled to have reconnected & known so many new people (esp writers). But now I shall go have my Syd Barrett years, so don’t be surprised to see a fat old bald guy growing roses in the garden next time you stop by!

************Post Script Re: DOTS

Hey GuyFriendPeoples, you know I don’t do much art that’s pretty. It’s just not what inspires me. But I want you to know I was making the most beautiful dot portrait of the view from our cottage on Siesta Key. It was turning out quite nicely, but…

…the art gods demanded a sacrifice out of the calypso blue   So I ripped up my landscape &

kicked my own ass

& everyone was happy

I will try to recreate the landscape sometime in the Spring. Now is too soon.

***********Post-post Script re: 8

This summer I found out I had an 8th sibling. Along with my 2 natural born sibs, my 2 long lost step-sibs, and my 2 younger adopted sibs, there was a sister born before my parents met in college. It was treated as a huge secret & swept under the rug, but I knew from a young age that my family was a very secretive unit, so I wasn’t surprised to find out five decades later that there were even more secrets than I’d figured out on my own. I haven’t met her yet. But I have no doubt she will be more welcome in our family than I ever was.

And so it goes.

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 ^^^