prosphoros

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I don't think I like my place in the world, but I'm not sure it's possible to change it in any meaningful way. Trapped: that's how I'm starting to feel, and it makes me want to hurl myself against the bars with all the fury I can muster.

Strange, erratic, dreams that kept shifting and blurring. I can't quite remember, but feel something just below the surface of memory that makes me think something is going on. Actually, this has been the case for the past few days, which is very atypical for me; usually I either remember (with meaning) or I don't.

Current Mood: sleepy

Does Rachel Maddow Speak for the Left?
Disappointingly enough, from The Nation:

A few weeks ago, Rachel Maddow appeared on Charlie Rose and announced that conservatives weren't the only ones disenchanted with Barack Obama. "The President has disappointed the left," she said. Rose asked her to be more specific – on what exactly? "I would say on the war, on healthcare, on economic [policy]… on civil liberties and on civil rights," Maddow said.

Eyal Press goes on to dismiss all of those concerns in an attempt to show that "the left" isn't disappointed with Obama by citing Democratic polling of Democrats, African Americans, Hispanics etc. The flaw in this "logic" is that membership in any or all of the above demographic groups doesn't make one a member of "the left".

But, based on that shoddy logic, Press then goes on to state that the reasons "the left" isn't disappointed with Obama are:

1) Progressives and left-leaning Democrats (if not self-identified radicals who want the system overthrown) are in an overwhelmingly pragmatic mood, notwithstanding the wide-eyed idealism that supposedly swept Obama into office.

(2) The legacy of the Bush era.

(3) The likeability of Obama.

Seriously? So, one is to assume it's natural and understandable for the very thing that swept Obama into office, "wide-eyed idealism", has now turned into business as usual pragmatism? Or is the new rallying cry for Obama changing from "Change you can believe in" to "At least he's not Bush?" And finally, "likeability"? Remember all the polling that showed Bush Lite was a "normal guy", someone with whom the majority of Americans could ostensibly see having a beer with? Is that really what anyone wants to pin their hopes on, knowing how badly that went before?

All celebrity crush aside, speaking as a self defined member of "the left", I'd say yes, in this regard, Rachel Maddow does speak for me, only I would have said it with more frustration and profanity.

I am very disappointed in Obama.

stuck in my head on waking
from the moodiest local ska band I know:

Now ever time I go I'm always lookin' for somethin'
I always come up short of nothin'
Why is that? I don't know!
But it's getting very old and it's cold
And I'm tired and I'm going home
But it's much too far
Now tell me what can I do?

Groove Stain "Lookin' Sorta Down"

anger, again
It feels like a lot of things are making me angry lately, but in a weird way I'm not sure I can explain, it feels like the anger comes from a place of strength. Even if I can (maybe) make sense of that, I still don't know what to do with it, since it seems like so much of "getting along" is letting things slide, letting things go unremarked, not pointing out that maybe the emperor isn't wearing shoes, not taking unpopular positions. I don't understand, if it actually is strength behind this anger, how I can possibly do anything with it without being markedly less fun at parties and increasingly isolated. There's got to be a way, but I just can't see it. I want to get there, but all I see is here, and the two don't appear to connect.

Current Mood: confused

envy
If I'm honest with myself (an ongoing project), I can admit to a lot of envy for a lot of people, in simple, straight forward ways; I wish I could do/have X like person Z"*. More and more lately, it's not a tool utilized to punish myself for... whatever; like James Dean, my historical answer has tended to be, "What do ya got?". So, envy, for what it's worth, feels like progress. If you're reading this, odds are good you're on the list of the envied.

But I think most of the time, I realize it's an unbalanced way of seeing the world and the people in it, a one way syllogism, if you will. I can see the enviable traits in others, and I can envy them, but I may be blind to the enviable traits I possess (assuming they're there).

So, you know, maybe this is a desperate plea for some ego love, or maybe it's a struggle for balanced perspective (honestly, probably bits of both), but if you're so inclined, I'm curious what, if anything, might be enviable about me. Who knows, maybe we can swap perspectives for a bit, and maybe get better together.

*which is very different than jealousy or spite; I don't have X like person Z, and I want to take it away from them/wish they didn't have it either"

brain garbage
(or, "I don't understand why I'm not 7 feet tall, green, and much stronger")

Note to no one that reads here:

Unremarked sexism will only be unremarked for so long. Of course, when that changes, I'll be the asshole.

and also:

You're the star of your movie. You aren't even supporting cast in mine.

Incoherent subcultural/identity group rage:

It's not that it's not always about me; I get that. It's that it's never about me. Maybe that's the intended message, and I'm too stubborn or stupid to get it.

Inclusion and replicatoin:

Dominance and hegemony come in many forms. Just because you're underprivileged and outcast over there doesn't mean it's impossible for you to do the exact same thing to others over here. Trust me on this.

In other news:

My endocrine system is confused as fuck. For that matter, so is my limbic system.

And finally:

I should probably eat something.

dream
Strange dream about travel by car and/or bus over mountains and through isolated valleys. It was all strangely familiar, maybe territory about which I had dreamed before? Small towns, strange interactions with folks, me and my companions being very clearly not of place in the areas through which we were traveling. I think there was something about going to a cool distant place,somewhere that might have been cool to stay a while and that we/I were sad to leave, one that made the trip worthwhile, to pick someone up, and then bring them back?

dear environmental organizations
Stop sending me unsolicited mail! Seriously, is it that hard to connect the fucking dots? Even if every fibre is 100% recycled (which it's not), what about the processing and shipping costs? Are you all that fucking stupid? I give you money online; I communicate with you online. Why the hell are you wasting the resources to send me physical mail when I never give you money from them?

Collectively, we are much, much too stupid to survive much longer.

Just coming off of a three day weekend, and already I feel like I need a fucking vacation, some place where the perpetual ticking of the clock and the tug of competing obligations don't threaten to knock me over. Damn is, is this what my life has become?

dream
Strange dreams about being a cyclical hermaphrodite in extreme southeast Florida. I think I was the parent of two kids (16 and 14?) with either androgen insensitivity or also cyclical (monthly) hermaphrodism. I remember trying to determine if I was "mother" or "father" to them, and then wondering how it would have worked if it was the former. I went down to the beach with a friend while the elder child was in the hospital for something (I think my least favorite episode of House may have crept in there).

Cuba was literally just a stone's throw across the water. The shore was large round stones (cannonball sized?) on the Cuba side, going up to a large wall. I remember deciding to skip stones across the gap, rather than throw them, because it seemed less aggressive, less likely to be misconstrued. My first attempt, with a strange, oblong stone almost the size of my cell phone, didn't quite make it, but my second, a rounded rock with one almost flat side, did easily.

I'm cranky and irritable, again, about the failure of the LGBT umbrella to offer me any cover at all. This time it's LOGO's Gender Rebel, in which "Three individuals shatter the confines of traditional gender identities." So, silly me, I decided to check it out.

The problem? All three are "biological females", a point made very clearly and very early in the intro. To me, this seems to be of a part in which gender variance/fluidity/-queer is visible and at least partially accepted, so long as it's a vagina bearer. This isn't the fault of the three people on the show; they're telling their stories, and that's a good thing. But, there is a paucity of voices, or even the opportunity to be heard, for penis bearing gender variant/fluid/-queer people. It's not unproblematic, the conditional acceptance of ft* people in the lesbian/queer woman community, but from where I stand, it kinda beats the perpetual cold shoulder.

I'm not sure why this is. I can see all sorts of intellectually sensible and defensible reasons this might be so, but none of them feel sufficiently right, and I'm reluctant to hitch my wagon to something I can force to make a kind of sense; I've done a bit too much of that to want to blindly do it again. I'm intellectually interested in the larger social currents in play that lead to this, sure, but honestly what I'm after is more on the ground information, things I can use in my life, not argue convincingly.

Current Mood: frustrated, dispirited

Searching the internet in pursuit of a sense of community I don't really have the words to describe seems a little ill-considered, but here I am...

Theory break. Particularly trans theory as implemented by people on the internet, some of whom I agree with, some of whom I do not, who are struggling in painfully familiar ways to make sense of the world, their experiences, and the connections between the two. There is nothing I can say, no addition I can make, that cannot unmake me in ways from the tiny to the huge.

I need a fucking break.

Edited to add: We'll see how long this lasts.

work
I can't remember if I've already talked about this or not. I guess, if so, it's still on my mind, so here goes:

I've got a new manager at work (my old manager is now my manager's manager, but it's good). The new manager is nice, engaging, has a strong HR background, and seems to be willing and able to work with me and within the environment as it exists. Sounds great, right?

But every time I do something she thinks is good, or commendable, or something she hadn't thought of yet, she tells me what a "good man" I am. It's meant, I'm sure, in the best of all possible lights, but it's the blindness to even the possibility that that might not be the best phrasing, or at least slightly problematic (particularly given her HR background), that adds some impersonal head scratching to the very personal gut stabbing reaction. Of course there's no problem with referring to people who are obviously one of two sexes by that label; who could possibly take issue with that?

Um, well, I could...

anger
I get so tired of being angry. I know, so why don't I just stop? It's because there's so much injustice in the world, so much unfairness, the overwhelming majority of which doesn't directly affect me, but still fills me with anger. There's so much to be angry about that I can't just turn a blind eye to it, because I already know, already see it; at this point, it would be almost an active dereliction of duty to ignore all of that.

It's not the omnidirectional, flare up and smack anyone handy kind of anger; it's focused, triggered by specifics, but unfortunately, also by specific things that are very interconnected, and just below the surface of so much. It's an energetic anger that makes me want to change the world, but there's so much I don't know where to start.

I have to figure out a way to use this, to do something with it, because it's not going away; if anything, as my compassion grows, my anger grows, too. I've got to use this productively some way.

One of my favorite experiences of the ocean is standing in the sand at the edge of the water and feeling the waves suck away at the sand under my feet. It's a fun sort of waiting for vertigo, and for my weight to shift to the holes where my feet used to be, such that I have to shift and then the game starts again.

But what I like about it is that it's a change from the everyday, where ground is habitually solid and reliable. What I don't like is the metaphorical (synaesthetic?) situation where solidity is a constantly chased spectre, where I'm never sure if I'll have enough purchase on the current shifting sand to make it to the next spot before it disappears. On the bad days, being conceptually excluded feels like standing on a tiny strip of sand just below the water as it gets sucked away, with no dry land in sight.

Fuck, maybe I need to start limiting the things I read and the places I read them. I just don't know if I have the energy or fortitude to read things with which I generally agree, then suddenly take a turn into "yeah..... wait, no way you just did that thing you did!" The irony being, a discussion on a list talking about privilege and the burden of educating, suddenly making the unquestioned statement that trans people are men or women.

I sometimes wish I could be self contained enough to be a hermit, but it's just not in the cards for me.

Damn it.

dream
Strange dream about being a generally clueless, but important, human in a group of old faeries/magical beings hiding out as human, and well trained humans in the know, gathering to oppose something bad and imminent. Weird things happened around me, and there was always the feeling of another shoe about to drop, but in a necessary, if nerve wracking way.

Then a dream about being supernaturally, impossibly strong, with an associate who had an item, or something not-her, that made her almost as strong, helping some thick necked guy with muscles lift his tractor trailer so it could clear a strange set of switchbacks on an inhabited, but curiously abandoned, dam. I remember I shredded a big rock like soft bread to show I could do what needed to be done.

Weird, and seemingly extracontextual.

Current Mood: sleepy

this just in
It's not you I'm afraid of; it's me.

Current Mood: reflexively self-referential