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This Just In: Relationships Fail.

This is a pretty miraculous little article about relationships but moreso, about love, and about the limits of intimacy. It blew me away. She starts at a place that most people would consider pessimistic, but the older I get, and the more couples I have known, the more I feel that she is just stating the obvious.

So let’s take a hard look at why relationships never seem to pan out. I mean, really—have you ever seen a functional relationship? There are some that seem to be functional, or possibly even very good, but we never really get to know too much about them. Then later, we discover the seedy underbelly—often when the couple splits—and are disillusioned all over again.

This one had domestic violence in it. That one has been a sexless marriage for the past 10 years. This one had one partner lying and cheating on the other. That one was more of a business arrangement, waiting patiently until the kids were out of the house. The list goes on and on.

So, um, yeah. There’s that.

Then she talks more about the why, and here’s it’s not hard to tell I found this in a buddhist journal:

Relationships are based on the fallacy that I exist, you exist, and that my happiness, connection and fulfillment can be met by something from the outside—that there even is an outside.

That might sound esoteric, but stick with me.

When we look at our experience we can’t actually find a “person,” or even a “self.” In any experience we can find what we call color, the sound of a voice, the experience of a touch, etc. Without a belief in a self, other or time—which are all just thoughts and images in the mind and have no substance—all we have is this moment. Continue reading “This Just In: Relationships Fail.”

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Kittens

We happen to be fostering three kittens at the moment, all of them goofy, clumsy little ninjas, hungry and recently weaned. One orange, one grey, one tortico. And they have been amusing the hell out of me, like kittens always do.

But today? They are running all over the place & so I’m reminded of that day 12 years ago when I looked down at our hardwood living room floor in Brooklyn and noticed that our kitty boys – who were then about a year & a half – had left footprints while they played.

& That was when we noticed the light coating of ash on the floor.

& Then it all comes back: the smell, god the smell. But the phone calls, & my family gathering on Long Island that following weekend, to look at our wedding photos – we’d just gotten married in July. Walking down the street in Park Slope & a woman stopping to take a call on her cellphone & watching her go ashen & cry & fall to her knees right there on the sidewalk. Finding a day a few months later to shop up on 7th Avenue and running into a funeral for a Rescue One firefighter.

It was a lot of that. It wasn’t a day.

It was months, now years, more than a decade, & yet the shock of it, and the sadness, never goes away.

So today, tears, and kittens who leave no footprints.

 

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Adam Ant on Tour

his current badass self rocking a skirt for London’s Fashion Week.

There are only a few US dates left, and I am pleased as punch I got to see him in Milwaukee. He still has so much stage charisma it’s ridiculous, and he’s doing a ton of the old punk songs – like “Zerox Machine”! – which makes antfans like me seriously happy.

If anyone out there wants to buy my round-trip airfare to the Pacific NW, I’d love to go see the Seattle & Portland shows which happen this upcoming weekend! Really. I’m not kidding. Even a little. I nearly drove to Minneapolis the day after the Milwaukee show to see him again.

Here he is doing a cool version of “Antmusic“, and for those of you who never saw him, this is the beauty that was Adam back in the day, doing “Physical (You’re So)” (which some of you may know from when NIN’s Trent Reznor covered it).

Here he is in the late 70s, back in the punk days, in the Derek Jarman film Jubilee, with the band that would eventually become Bow Wow Wow, playing “Plastic Surgery”.

& The best part of this clip is all the aging punk rockers doing the “Prince Charming”.

I can’t even begin to explain how or why this man saved my life, but he did.

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Becoming White

As per usual, a good post at Abagond about American whiteness: this article details the way ‘my people’ became white in America. I’m both Southern European (Italian) & Eastern European (Polish) and also German & a tiny, tiny little bit Irish (who weren’t white either when they first came to the US, of course). Here are some highlights, but do go read the whole thing.

The Third Enlargement of American Whiteness (1930-1980) was when the Jews, Italians and others from southern and eastern Europe became White Americans, when they melted into the melting pot.

. . .

Late 1800s: Crossing the Atlantic becomes cheap. Suddenly anyone can come to America: unlettered peasants from Italy, penniless Jews and others from southern and eastern Europe. They fill the slums of New York and elsewhere. The government fears they will be stuck there forever – a permanent underclass.

1910s: They are called “alien races” … they bring crime and poverty. They have too many children. They do not understand freedom and democracy, voting for corrupt political machines. Skull measurements (and later IQ tests) prove they lack intelligence.

. . . Continue reading “Becoming White”

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How (Not) To Be An Ally

My patience for snark is really, really low these days, but I still found some of the gems in “8 Ways Not To Be An “Ally”: A Non-Comprehensive List” pretty useful.

But I’m still going to re-articulate them for those who don’t understand irony. I’ve put her comments in italics, and tried to articulate in my earnest, non-snarky way, why this list is so vital. I’ve also added one of my own.

1. Assume one act of solidarity makes you an ally forever means fighting oppression is an ongoing, day to day struggle that doesn’t come with much resolution if any. One day the world is not going to just be better. Which means that you, as an ally, need to keep doing whatever work you do to minimize racism, sexism, homphobia, etc.

2. Make everything about your feelings, or, it’s not about you. The best way to go about this is to shut up and listen. That’s all. Stop talking so much. Listen. Pretend you don’t have an opinion and that other people’s lived experiences are actually as valid as your own. It’s a nutty idea, I know, but it’s true. People who live with marginalization are often – shocker! – at least as smart as you, if not smarter.

3.  Date ’em all will not, in any way, make you an ally automatically. In fact, it could instead mean that you’re a fetishizing, exploitive, clueless jerk. (Trans admirers take special note here, please.)

4. Don’t see race/gender/disability/etc. is a good way of eliminating someone’s identity and specifically an identity which – because of the sexist, racist, transphobic, ablesist culture we live in, tends to essentialize a person due to that marginalization. Not seeing that aspect of them is belittling and really only lets you off the hook, free from your white liberal guilt. That is, it does nothing for people who are marginalized, but everything for people who aren’t.

5. Don’t try any harder, or, try until you succeed, not just until your white liberal guilt is assuaged. See above. Continue reading “How (Not) To Be An Ally”

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Minus Dad

I wanted to send my love out to all of you – which includes me – who don’t have a dad to celebrate this year.

Some days, Facebook just feels like a plague of shitty, happy people.

Still, I will spend mine on a bike, in the sun, & call my mother, as all those things would have made my dad happiest. (I will leave the eating of cured meats to my siblings.)

& Now I will get back to my marathon screenings of Mad Men. More on that another day.

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May 19

Today would have been my dad’s 85th birthday. He used to joke, whenever someone complained about getting older, that the only other option was worse. He never really did complain about getting older himself and didn’t talk much about aches and pains. He was just kind of angry when he didn’t feel well, which is maybe an odd reaction, but it does bring some relief that he didn’t suffer for very long and didn’t have a long, drawn-out illness. He would have been pretty miserable with that kind of thing.

But. Still.

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May 3: Would Have Been

It would have been my parents’ 61th wedding anniversary today. And just in time, I discovered this word:

Ya’aburnee(Arabic): “You bury me.” It’s a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person, because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

(There are nine others that we don’t have in English, here. I’ll be blogging later just about the term saudade.)

My mother just told me that she regretted she never got to take care of my dad, that she never got to be of service to him once he was unable to take care of himself. & You know, folks, it just doesn’t get more heartbreaking than that. So despite my joy that she is still here, I feel a little guilty that she lives with a hole in her heart, without him.

She also said. “I had nearly 60 years with him, but I’m greedy, and wanted more than that.”

Happy anniversary, mom & dad. & Thanks for setting that bar high. Dad, we miss you more than you ever would have imagined.

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Last Night Right Now

I was pleased to get to speak to Senator Tammy Baldwin for a brief minute last night – in a gender-neutral bathroom, no less – who gave me a thumbs up when I mentioned that I taught gender studies. That was cool. She spoke while introducing historian Dick Wagner, who was receiving an award from Fair Wisconsin. She told the story of seeing Geraldine Ferraro accept the US VIP nomination in 1984, and it was pretty incredible. From what I hear, she has told that story before, but I had never heard it, and it brought me back to watching that myself – and the same feelings for me, at 15, thinking “anything is possible now.” It was a big, big, audible crack in the glass ceiling — as is Senator Baldwin’s current seat.

I also had a nice talk with Zach Wahls about the terms ally, queer, queerspawn, and the like. He is a pretty remarkable guy, and his talk was the right combination of serious, sad, frustrated, and full of love. We should be very, very glad to have him in these queer communities. And that he speaks on behalf of equality – not just marriage equality, mind you – as an Eagle Scout is pretty damned cool. Hopefully I will do an interview with him in the next couple of months.

Finally: I am not disappearing altogether from blogging. I am taking a huge break from FB, specifically, because I have too many ongoing misgivings with the site, for various reasons – and now seemed like the right time. In some ways, what I’m frustrated by is the odd merger of personal and professional life that FB encourages; here at my blog, it’s a little easier to stay at arm’s length, which is what I need right now. But there is nothing wrong, per se; I am not depressed or angry or hurt or anything like it. A little tired of the shallow ways of connecting that FB also encourages, perhaps, but that is all.

I am happy to have people send me a heads up about interesting things going on about gender or transness or all of the other stuff you know I’m interested in. Feel free to email me or leave a comment if you want to say hi.

A huge THANK YOU to those of you who have written expressing concern or good luck or just to say: you earned a break. It’s very, very much appreciated.

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The Company You Keep

A friend of mine wrote a song with that title a long time ago, & the band White Rabbits has a similarly titled song too. I think it’s still the motto of some insurance company.

A long time ago a friend gave me a piece of advice: only hang out with people you admire. It’s a piece I’ve returned to again and again over time even though I’ve generally had an uncanny ability to choose friends well. Only in the past few years have I jmade a couple of very bad choices. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but in retrospect, here’s what I failed to do: I failed to look carefully at what people do NOT when they are sad or suffering or lonely, but how they behave when they are on top of their game. You can really only tell the content of someone’s character when they are sitting pretty: when they have enough money, or power, or luck, when things are going well for them. It’s then that you see what a person is made of: whether they become cruel, petty tyrants, or cliquish and gossipy and judgmental.

The thing is, when people suffer or feel lonely, they are often more sympathetic, not less, and they will be kind because they need kindness returned, but when they have everything, that’s when you know who they truly are. I have seen too many people become arrogant, obnoxious assholes when, at long last, they think they’ve got something other people envy, whether it’s money or popularity or power or fame. Over and over again, I’ve seen it. Sadly, this observation has made me more cynical about human nature, not less, but it also helps me clarify what kind of people I want to hang out with, who is truly generous and living honestly, the ones who only use whatever good fortune they have to create abundance in others’ lives as well.

So check that graphic I posted again yesterday. If people who are your friends fit a lot more of the characteristics of the right side of that graphic, your bar is set way too fucking low. Aspire to generosity, abundance, and service (and I don’t mean that in the kinky way, although that’s fine too, if that’s what floats your boat). It brings so much more meaning, and the world only gets bigger and brighter and more full of love.

One more thing: sometimes you’re hard pressed to find even one person you admire that you can hang out with. Sometimes, none. But whatever you do, don’t lower your bar to assuage your loneliness. That’ll kick your ass in the long run; it did mine. If it’s necessary, only hang out in books with people you admire; read biographies of people who have quietly done amazing things, or have even suffered notoriety with grace. Believe me, there are plenty of people out there to admire, but they’re often too busy doing amazing things to make themselves look admirable.

And with that: onward and upward in 2013. Here’s hoping you all have a wildly transcendent year.