Found

Twin Rocks is the place I go to gaze at the horizon, to walk barefoot for miles, to get sand in my clothes from beach-yoga.

On Saturday the 10th, I was walking alone on the beach. For quad strengthening, I’ve taken up backwards-walking. I’d inspect my intended route at the surfline, making sure there were no dead crabs, and then walk backwards for sixty paces or so, before checking again.

That’s how I found the glasses. I stepped on them, walking backwards, where the Pacific meets land.

Maybe someone’s glasses fell out of a pocket while walking their dog.

Those are bifocals. Bifocals are worn. Bifocals don’t live in pockets.

Remember the Coast Guard helicopters circling Twin Rocks yesterday? They were looking for someone.

I plucked them from the sand. For twenty-five years I’ve worn corrective lenses. Glasses are intimate, personal.

What if these belong to the missing person?

Back at my room, before a deputy was dispatched for reports and retrieval, I checked Coast Guard updates.

62-year-old fisherman missing from Nehalem Bay, his twelve-foot boat found capsized two miles offshore.

I asked to be notified if the glasses were linked to the missing fisherman. I just wanted to know. After a week, I called the Tillamook Sheriff to follow up.

They told me that the frames match, but the prescription was slightly off.

Was it an old pair of glasses in his fishing box, maybe?

There was not a definitive identification linking the glasses to the man whose obituary haunts me. His wife couldn’t say for sure they were his, I was told.

For me, knowing whether or not those glasses belonged to the man lost at sea is not the point. Yes, I’d rather know, but I will probably never know. The question lingers, trailing off, like a whistle in the wind.

Intimate artifacts remain, after we are gone. We are leaving breadcrumbs for others to find, to consider, to mull over.

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary marking my grandfather’s death. The things he left behind remain with me.

Life may be fleeting, but it persists.

Coasting

The more time I spend on the Oregon coast, the better. I find things, lose things, and settle things. On our last trip, for the Libra birthdays, I found things.

I found a new sister.

I found conviction regarding TW’s and my wedding ceremony to be held in 2011.

I found something in the surf.

More later, especially about that last one. It’s a story that is still tilting my reality, and sorting it out before posting seems prudent.

Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon weekend was full, preparing for and celebrating and reveling in the opening of Amy’s clinic, Blue House Holistic Health. After ceremony, bounty, song, fire, friends, and blessings of wellness,we approached this week anticipating a visit, Libra birthday celebrations, and a trip to the coast.

Tonight we rendezvoused for dinner, and drove home caravan-style.

Luna was peeking over the eastern horizon, a waning parchment sphere. As I reached for the phone to call her, she was calling me at the same time. “The moon! The moon!” we cried to each other.

We try to tell each other, every day, something unique about why we love each other.

La Luna is my reason today.

Self-Care

When I woke up today, I lay quietly for a few minutes, looking at the changing color of the sky, breathing. I breathed and was quiet with myself, rather than groaning and getting up after snoozing five-too-many times to rush off to work. I just took a few minutes to be quiet with myself and be. It’s telling how strange it was to do that. It felt good.

After work I visited my friend. We ate from her garden and talked about the ways we are similar, the things we are struggling with, the lessons that are helping us find healing. She and I have many parallels, and we both find it valuable to reflect to each other the ways that we can foster kindness toward ourselves. We often nod knowingly as the other speaks, and we actively remind each other to show compassion for ourselves. It was nice to reconnect with her.

I showed her this blog for the first time. Scrolling through the pages, I was a bit startled to realize the chronicle this contains. Apologetic posts appear, sporadically, noting my absence, acknowledging my pain. Those punctuation posts are small cairns in the emotional terrain I’ve traveled. I want to add more cairns, to mark my steps, to show where I am and where I’ve been. Perhaps I will see where I’m going, but at very least, I can honor where my feet stand, in this moment.

Today was a good day.

Awkward

Squeezing Blood

Posting here more than once a month has become tedious.

Bearing Witness

Being a sap, I seeped yesterday during a remarkably moving wedding ceremony.

Whatever I seeped wasn’t sweet like maple, but it was caught in a bandanna. Despite my fancy teal dress, I decided to keep the handkerchief action ole-fashioned.

Today I’m tired, having consumed a nice quantity of champagne.

But I’m blessed, having witnessed the vows of devotion between beloveds.

Strong Feelings

Yesterday I was driving out of a community center parking lot, when I saw something that compelled a response. A vehicle had three bumper stickers: “ProWoman, ProLife” and “Peace Begins in the Womb” and “Abortion Kills Unborn Women.”

I pulled my car into a shady spot and wrote the following:

Water Appreciation

My vow:  never again will I take indoor plumbing for granted.

Waking Up

My eyes were still heavy when I slid open the back door before six this morning.

Snow?

Wisteria blossoms dusted the back porch in lavender.

I kept that smile all day.

Function

Lately I’ve found myself caught in an eddy.

One

I keep watching this.  I post it on Crackbook, then I watch it some more. I’m posting it here too, because I’d rather visit it here than there.

Flutter

I posted a status to Facebook and it caused a flutter. It touches on topics in TNBP, a hint. Illuminating, in a tired old way.

I posted

“Mossie listens to the Family Home Evening Players. Oh yes. That’s right. Monday nights at my house are musically inclined.”

And within ten minutes I had these comments:

PL:  What a coincidence! I was just discussing my contempt for Mormons with my dad! Here’s to family home evening!

AS:  We still do family home evening. It’s the night I stay sober and stop abusing my wife.

PG: Damn Mormons….with their family values and charity work.

SB:  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

RM: and their skills of fundraising and campaigning for various political causes. . .

To which I responded:

oh my goodness.
I love families! I love home! I love evenings!
Monday nights have become band practice at my home,
so the emerging band name became clear.
We love families! We love home! We love evenings!
I’m listening to Shady Grove right now.
Will post something when I get the technology worked out.

* * *

After reading it out loud to the band practice (whose working name is, unabashedly, the Family Home Evening Players), Nathan said, “Mormons make people hot! Hot and bothered! Lots of energy around Mormons. Have you noticed that? Lots of energy.”

Shelled

1.

2.

Spellbinding Interlude

Nothing from the files here, this one is outside the purge that has become TNBP.

This one is fresh and new, like the tender daffodil shoots coming up in the lawn, unrestrained by the rock flowerbed outside my back door in the rainforested Camp France.

This one cycles back on itself, with time and whispers curling away across the watery edge of the continent.

It is the spiral jetty, labyrinthine curvature, spiral dance, sliding inward and outward, ever expansive.

I kidnapped TW to the coast last weekend, and we began our honeymoon, in anticipation of our ceremony a few months from now.

For hours we skimmed the beach in February sun, clear creeks crossing our path.  We rinsed sandy toes in chilly water and walked arm-in-arm. We laughed and dreamed and planned and schemed and made vows.

There, on the Pacific coast, we quietly began knitting our spell. The strands from our stitching trailed behind us as we drove over the coastal range back to our Portland home.  Here we continue weaving and tying, in deliberate stitches, the substance of our spell, our promises, our intentions. And then, in July, we will take those strands across North America to the Atlantic coast, where the knitting and weaving and stitching will further bind us together in our shared path.

Spellbound.

TNBP: On Being a Crier, Part 2

“Don’t let it bother you,” people tell me. “You can’t be so sensitive. Get angry instead.”

TNBG: On Being a Hypocrite, Part 1

I’ve started to recognize and acknowledge a rather significant shift happening for me, in the ways I experience the world and vice versa.

I am generally perceived as straight, as heterosexual. TW can verifiy that lesbians don’t give me the time of day. Never really have. I am not “read” as gay. Since late adolescence I knew I wasn’t straight, and within a few years I had embraced my queerness, my strong physical attraction for women. But my own personal embrace of being queer did not change the world seeing me as straight. My own methods of embracing my queerness did not “look” gay. Heterosexual privilege seeped from my pores.

Of course, it didn’t help that I was married. To a man. We were happily, if nontraditionally, married. Even before I proposed to him, and even before a Mormon-scholar-turned-Unitarian minister administered our chosen pacifist vows (to feed, clothe, grow with, comfort, and always love), I had my suspicions about marriage. I had studied the misogynist and slavish roots of matrimony. During my marriage I continued to challenge presumptions about what it meant as an institution, as a practice, as a benefit, as a challenge, as space for growth.

In graduate school, I researched, wrote, and published on private contracting as a preferable method to administer legal rights, duties, and benefits in personal relationships. I investigated the interplay of law and culture, of church and state, of heterosexist privilege and concepts of ownership that pervade monogamist law.  I discussed the harms experienced and legal disability suffered that comes from living in a relationship that was not sanctioned, recognized, and protected. I argued about the limits of marriage and the difficulty faced by those whose relationships exist outside dyadic pairings easily protected by law.

Not everyone in Queer America is on board with the marriage movement. Some argue that the focus on marriage is elitist, given wide legality of discrimination and basic human needs being unmet. Others don’t want marriage themselves due to the cultural baggage attached. There are those who point out that the focus on fidelity and marriage accept the premise that other relational styles are inferior and better unacknowledged. Some bitterly decry the sanitization of queer culture, a “hey, we’re just like you nuclear-family long-term monogamists!”

I once felt that way, both before and during my first marriage, that marriage that was sanctioned and legal and unequivocally recognized as real. It’s ironic, and excruciating, and perhaps karmic, to have been married once before, while hotly critiquing the compulsion to marry, yet benefiting from the protection offered by the institution itself.

I was a hypocrite.

It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.

There.

That is the first bite of the elephant also known as That New Blog Post.

That New Blog Post, a Prelude.

There’s a label in my gmail called “A New Blog Post.” I’ve been dumping things in it for a long time. I keep thinking that I’ll find the energy, or the inclination, or the lack of distraction, or the motivation, to write it.

That New Blog Post. TNBP.

It is large, saturating corners of myself that had long been ignored and set aside. It looms. But it also creeps from beneath. That file contains scattered scraps of conversations, of reactions, of memories, of buried sadness and wounds from righteous and not-so-righteous indignation. Part of the clog is a painful self-consciousness, vague uncertainty about what exactly I’m doing here, and yet how essential it feels to express the clog, all the backed up responses, in terms that are both healing and detoxifying.

Detoxification. Release of toxins. In a Vinyasa class, I sweated and dripped, releasing.

These drops, here, eeked out painfully and oh-too-deliberately, are the detoxification of my clogged mental and emotional file.

Responses to social-political stimuli have left me tattered, uncertain, and choked-up. Self-censorship holds me back. Promising myself to be real, to forgive myself for targets that seem to move, and to get it out – those are today’s intentions.

Thankful

My response to being tagged by Stone to name 25 things for which I’m grateful:

Remembering that I am glorious and forgetting to be mean to myself.

Being in love and devoted.

Validation and support.

The recognition that comes from simultaneously seeing and being seen, loving and lifting up, supporting growth.

The evolving friendship I share with my sister.

Parents who love me, even when they don’t understand me.

Being emotionally aware.

Holistic health care addressing physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being.

The opportunity to share my home with non-human animals.

Knowing what it tastes like to eat food that my loved ones have grown.

Feeling confident in my ability to express myself without punishment.

Clean municipal water.

Exquisitely soft bedding.

A peaceful home.

Access to communications.

Research skills.

Eclectic worldviews and spiritualities from which meaning and purpose are intensely reflected and magnified.

Quietude.

Inner peace – albeit fleeting – and acceptance of my imperfections.

Standing on the coast, feeling the wind and tides, the cycles of the moon pulling at the water in my body.

The rush of fire swirling around me, circles intertwining in a flaming spiral of transformation.

Cloth made from natural fibers.

Redemption and forgiveness, found organically.

Forgetting and re-membering, weaving and stitching together.

Breathing into my core.

Quickening Light

Groundhog Day is the equivalent of the old European pagan holyday Imbolc, or the Festival of Brigid, also known as Candlemas. It marks the halfway point between winter solstice and vernal equinox, and is called the “quickening of light.” I always notice the way the light looks different during the last week in January/first week in February. The buds are starting to pop on the trees, and even if it’s cold, I still know that spring is on its way. Hail spring!

On Monday I saw this invitation to particpate in a blog-based poetry gathering and told myself I’d do it.  And I am . . . I’m just tardy.  Y’all weren’t waiting were you?

Here’s my blessing for this holyday, entitled Losses, posted with permission of the author, Minx Boren:

overwhelming sometimes

how so many losses

are notched on the heart

of a single human life

so much that is irretrievable

burdens left necessarily

by the side of the road

lest their full weight

become unbearable

and then of course

there are other times

and other losses

so great

so connected to the core

of our being

that they must

of necessity

be enfolded into the totality

of our Self

like whisked egg whites into batter

adding to the texture

and volume

of our life story

from Feeling My Way – 99 Poetic Journeys

© 2008 Minx Boren. All rights reserved.

www.coachminx.com

Mayor Sam

Here’s the first installment of the overdue blog purge mentioned here.

Mayor Sam Adams.

Can I tell you how thrilled I was to vote for Mayor Sam? Thrilled. Energized. Totally stoked. I had never met him in person, but all my impressions were pos-i-tive. Those photos of Sam in work gloves and an orange Volunteer t-shirt pulled over his button-down and tie? Or Sam on his bike? Or Sam’s long-term involvement in Portland’s City Hall?  It was like a wonderboy politico dream to me. Plus, he’s gay, and that was like the sprinkles on my happy-to-support-Sam cupcake. And so, as a newcomer to Portland, I was quite pleased to help elect Sam Adams as mayor.

For those who don’t know about this issue,  go here for the breaking story. Further follow-up from the same paper can be found here.

I find it ironic that we first heard of it at a livestock feed store on Foster Road. I waited outside while TW picked up scratch for our chickens. Back in the car, TW told me she overheard someone saying “our gay mayor is in the news having sex with a teenager.”  I bristled. I recounted that I’d read somewhere that Mayor Sam was older than his boyfriend, but that to say he was having sex with a teenager was ill-informed and likely homophobic.

That sweet delusion lasted about fourteen hours, until I heard the news myself the next day.

On 1/20 at 1:35 pm, my FaceCrackbook profile status read: 

“should be used to bittersweet feelings on joyous days. Obama wins & Prop8 passes. Obama is inaugurated and my mayor is a big liar.”

I was pissed off.  So pissed off.  Do I really need to recount it all here? It was everywhere.  Willamette Week, of course, and my more regular news sources like OPB, Just Out, The Oregonian, The Mercury. And my RSS feed was chock full of posts on BlueOregon, OurPDX, Joe.My.God, The Bilerco Project, and many many personal blogs.

Feeling sick with disbelief, I watched and read and told my friends how angry I was, how disappointed. The extent to which the lie was perpetuated, Sam’s denial of the accusation in 2007, decrying such “sleazy misrepresentations or political manipulation” – it was just too much. When posting my dismay and outrage in short-form, friends and acquaintances seemed to respond with a what-do-you-expect-from-a-politician shrug. Such feedback simply fed my dismay.

I’ll freely admit that I’m idealistic and perhaps naive. I believe that calculated campaigns that involve lying are troubling. It takes a significant amount of energy to subvert truth, and generally those attempts ultimately fail. My faith in a leader I had hoped to trust was ruptured. Compound that betrayal by my lack of history with Portland, its players, and sense of general public opinion, and I felt lost. I asked myself how I could reconcile my furrowed brow that grew deeper as the story thickened with my jubilation and hopefulness for a leader whose record and reputation were known to me secondhand. The answer still eludes me. Of all the things I have read, I keep coming back to this letter, although I do not unequivocally agree with everything within it.

What saddens me as much as the admission and story that Sam Adams lied is the fractured in-fighting in the community. Granted, Just Out’s initial editorial calling for the mayor’s resignation came quickly, and was followed by similar calls from other papers. The reaction and vitriol expended toward Just Out in particular was astounding. Someone started a group dedicated to boycotting the paper, and bragged publicly about destroying entire issue stacks at distribution sites. What I perceive as a ghettoized gay assumption that a queer paper should stand by Sam on the basis of his queerness is inherently offensive.

I have a vague sense that these hot-headed disagreements and dramatic displays are skirmishes in a long series of culture wars that have predominated my adolescence and adult life. And it seems in these wars that it is not the big battles, it’s the hand-to-hand combat, the aggression, the refusal to discuss and listen and be accountable – it’s these skirmishes that deplete our resources and perpetuate an atmosphere of defense and attack.

What’s the bottom line? Do I think my mayor should resign? I really don’t know. But I definitely don’t think that voices should be silenced, that discussion should be curbed, that Sam’s behavior should be excused as private and his lying therefore justified or understandable. If we can’t expect our leaders to be upfront and ethical, what can we expect?

Upcoming: more culture war themes with hating and boycotting Mormons in the Prop 8 fallout, disclosure of political donations, the complexities of fostering actual dialogue, family dynamics, and finding Common Ground.

Unclenching the Jaw

Right now I am focused on my mouth.  Or more accurately, my jaw.  Today I had some digital imaging taken and sensors hooked up to test various aspects of my head, honing in on the ball and socket joints on either side of my face.

My jaw is really sore; I’m in a lot of pain, which seems mostly related to having my mouth opened and fiddled with.  Which leads me to realize how much I’ve been keeping my jaw closed. Closed up tight.

I like to find symbolism and patterns all around me, and this one is no exception. I’d smile, but my mouth hurts, so what I’m doing looks more like a wry grin. Could my locked up jaw be a physical manifestation of the way words and ideas and thoughts and reactions have been bottled up? Yeah, sure.

And/but the proximate cause for my pain is the severe neck and jaw whiplash I experienced on 4/11/08, the date of the Incident, which took place a few hours after I found out about the Unsurprising Non-Passage.

The time has come to restore my jaw.

Lately, I’ve had a lot to say. And I’ve said none of it. Part of the silence is related to feeling overwhelmed. Most of the silence is related to mourning. And some of the silence is related to painful self-consciousness. I question myself continually, and feel unable to make a coherent argument in the midst of the mind-chatter within. I’m shell-shocked.

Enough, I say.  Enough excuses, just write it out. Figure it out in the process of writing it out. Don’t think about it so damn much.

So where to begin?  Maybe I’ll work backwards in time, to address the recent irritations and get them out of the way. We’ll start with Mayor Sam.

percolation

the things I’ve been thinking about and taking notes about and starting to write about ..  but that are still gestating and percolating through the grounds:

- culture wars and casualties

- theory and practice of building bridges

- justice and fairness and ethics

- betrayal and forgiveness

- exhaustion >> complacency

I’m thinking that those may be too many, too broad to cover all at once.  Like my piano teacher used to tell me, you can eat an elephant if you do it a bite at a time.  But the question remains:  who wants to eat an elephant?

25

Facebook is like crack.  Crackbook.  I’m sure I didn’t make that up, but I’m adopting it.  It’s weird, that Facebook place.  FB.  Watching each other, seeing how statuses change, being reminded of people I haven’t seen or thought about for ten or twenty years.

And as part of the Crackbook experience, I was tagged on a meme.  I’m terrible with those things.  Stone tagged me two months ago on a different meme via her blog, and I haven’t done it yet.  I will do it.  Just not yet.

But when I was tagged by three different people on this Crackbook meme, I decided to do it.  And since I spent time doing it, and since I haven’t pulled my thoughts together to finish a blog post here, I’m going to cross-post my 25 Random Things About Me list from FB for your boredom pleasure.  I took it an extra step further and linked to some other blog posts that may apply to some of the random items.

I’m not going to overtly tag anyone, though.  It was difficult enough to choose 25 people to tag on Crackbook.  I don’t have the energy to do it again.  But if you want to tag yourself, please do by indicating such in the comments.

And voila,

25 Random Things About Me:

1.  For many years, I yearned to be traditional.  In some ways I’m deeply traditional, and in others I’m not in the least.

2.  Having studied postmodern theory and semantics and gender studies, among other things, I immediately question what I mean when I use the word “traditional.”

3.  Raw tomatoes is a food I strongly dislike, unless they are diced, like in a salsa or pico de gallo.  I think it’s a texture thing.

4.  During the summer of 2006, I took a three-week trip on the Goddess Bus we called “Serenity Now”.  That trip changed my life forever.

5.  When I got married the first time, I was the same age my parents were when they married each other.

6.  My mom has a lot to do with the fact that I started reading at a very young age.

7.  The choice to go to law school seems surreal and it still surprises me that I did it.

8.  I like school because I generally do well there.  Outside-of-school world (aka “the real world”) has felt scary to me because I’ve been less confident that I’d be successful.

9.  My dad broke his neck in 1978 and cringes every time he hears me pop and crack my bones and joints, especially my neck.

10.  Twenty years ago I competed in Scottish Highland Games, doing dances like the Fling and Sword Dance and a funky one called the Seann Triubhas.  I’ll buy a drink for anyone who can correctly pronounce that last one without the assistance of google or wikipedia.  On your honor.

11.  Even after I was an adult, my feet were bizarrely small – a children’s 4.5, which definitely does not fit my body structure.  I quit wearing shoes for a few summers so my very-tall arches would fall a bit and my feet would get bigger.  Now I wear a more normal size 7.

12.  Speaking of shoes, I’d wear my Chaco sandals every single day if I thought I could get away with it. Perhaps that will be the standard by which I choose my career:  can I wear my Chacos?

13.  My fascination with the number 23 is partially because I was born on 3/23 and my head crowned at 3:23 am.  I was well into my adulthood when I learned that there are actual societies of people who investigate the peculiarities and anomalies of the number 23.

14.  I distinctly remember the first time I saw TW play music, back in 1999.  She was playing at the Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, and I was sitting on the back pew.  I was delighted by the harmonica and slide guitar and how soulful and quirky she was.  I continue to be delighted by those things now, plus other stuff, like her laughter and banjo picking and ability to communicate with chickens.

15.  When I was sixteen, I failed my driving exam twice.  I felt humiliated, but it was no surprise.  I was a terrible driver.  I’ve improved a lot since then, although some disagree.

16.  Right now I am on the verge of something incredible.  I’ve been on this verge for a little while, and I can feel the wave starting to crest beneath me.

17.  I have strange issues with exhibitionism and privacy.  I want to be seen, and yet I want to hide at the same time.  That’s part of the angst I’ve expressed about this blog and why it is not linked to my FB profile.

18.  My first partner bought me a pet snake for Christmas in 1995, shortly after I wondered aloud if getting a pet snake would help me get over my fear of them.

19.  I miss my friend Patty and often think about the discussions we had about death, dying, hospice, death taboos, and how to help facilitate non-toxic burial options. We talked about choices for those who don’t necessarily want to be cremated, but who also don’t want their body to be pumped full of chemicals and preserved in a coffin inside a concrete tomb.

20.  I’ve never been out of the continental United States.  Not even to Canada.

21.  Despite my dad’s best efforts to teach me when I was a kid, I didn’t really learn how to ride a bike until I was 27.  I’m still not particularly skilled, so the term that something “is like riding a bike” doesn’t really resonate with me.

22.  I enjoy skipping more than running, especially skipping down mountain trails.

23.  The next time I get married, I’ll have a deeper appreciation for what it means and what it doesn’t.

24.  My tongue was pierced for a really long time and I went to a lot of trouble to keep it under wraps for professional purposes.  I only recently gave it up when my dentist convinced me it was starting to damage my gums.

25.  I was excited to turn thirty, am looking forward to forty and beyond, and don’t feel scared of getting old.  I’m curious to know what it will be like.  I’m also curious to see what the great Mystery will be after death, even if it’s Nothing.

less sad

that’s today’s status. Less sad. More hopeful.

(I might actually write something substantive, and/or interesting, eventually.)

In the mean time, my sunshine-soaked vitamin D experience is assisting in making this day better than yesterday.

Too Sad

I’m too sad to say anything except, “I’m too sad.”

Drafts

Where to start?  Where to stop?  When to revisit that draft that has languished, or grown with added snippets, and when to abandon it permanently?  When to share this blog address with others, and when to relish the alleged privacy of not-sharing?

There are many things I could say here.  There are many posts that have been considered, but are yet unwritten.  Perhaps they will be published at some point, but probably not today.

In the mean time, you can see the pure-image project that I posted to my sidebar, 365 self-portraits.  I’ve decided not to provide any commentary on that site, and will just let the images – which are taken with a low-quality camera for the time being – speak for themselves.

Baptism

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I was told something. Something significant. This thing that I knew to be True for so many years, it’s an altogether different sensation when it’s said aloud, as opposed to the silent knowing in my heart. It’s like feeling waves crash over me as opposed to watching the waves break in the distance.

Several days after I was Told the Truthful Thing, we went to the beach. It was my dad’s birthday. It was the eleventh anniversary of my maternal grandfather’s death. It was a beautiful day.

We were mesmerized, my mom and me.  We were standing on the beach at Seaside, watching the waves, walking out toward them, entranced. We kept walking and walking and walking further out together, and the waves were closer and closer, but still seemed far away.

In retrospect, it was much like watching the waves of my mom’s mental tides throughout my thirty-some years as her daughter.

Deep in my throat, I cried Wait! We’re out too far! We’re too close! But the sound bounced off my skull, lost in the sound of surf.

All at once, the waves were there.  In less than a moment the water was over her ankles and then her waist and then she was under the wave, the sand sucking, churning, grasping her to the shifting earth. As I moved toward her, it grabbed me, pulled me under, water shoving my thighs, buckling my knees, battering my ribs.

I struggled to get up, and was knocked down again. And again.

Then my brother was there, holding mom’s head above the waves that continued to crash. Others arrived, rescuing her dog, finding footing, denying the sand and water their prize. Not today.

Baptism. By water, by sand, by sound. By reality. By definition. By word. By label. By diagnosis. By acknowledgment.

Those waves that seemed so far away, that reality about my mom and me and our place on the shore, in that physical place and in our mental landscapes – they weren’t far away at all. They were just waiting, waiting for us to draw close enough to touch, to feel, to be baptized. But not to be overtaken. Our family pulled us to shore.

Cave

Some days I need to be in a cave.  I am wistful when that need coincides with the light dancing, filtering through the trees outside, when I can see the blue sky out of the corner of my cave-window.

Some days the tightness in my chest, the shallow breath, the rolling belly, the pain saturating thought and feeling and breath – it’s too much.Too much to write, too much to share, too much to feel or think or be.

On those days, I am often quiet. At times those days string together in a strand, and at times they simply punctuate.

That’s where I’ve been, in my cave. I retreated there, giving myself permission to be and feel whatever I need to be and feel.  When I was done, I emerged, refreshed, rested, and ready. Ready to say the next thing.

chronology of sixteen

On our first date, she told me of her visits with fairies and other spritely spirits.

“I’m an elven creature,” she said, without a trace of irony.  I nodded as though I understood.

My nervousness that night was the out-of-breath sort. Hers was quiet, watchful, perceptive. Deliberate. Wary, perhaps.

I knelt before her and ate fire, seducing her in the ways I knew, hoping she would see me, and want me anyway.

As we said goodnight, I pressed my attraction against her chest.  Precious little time to waste.  In sixteen days I’d be gone.

The next day she saw me hovering around her garden gate. I saw her Know. She took it in and looked down, smiling to herself. She realized then, if she didn’t before, that I wasn’t an apparition.

She tended vegetables as I watered flowers and grapes and fruit trees. My inside eye, my futuresee, flashed on gardens to come, and I giggled involuntarily.

Since then, the moon has grown and shrunk sixteen times. We nourish our bodies with food grown together. We plant seeds for future plans.

We will travel to the other edge of the continent, to the North Atlantic, to the Cape, where we will make our vows public, protected by laws of a commonwealth.

And we know ourselves to be uncommonly wealthy.

Conversations

At the rally on Saturday, I saw my cousin and his husband. Of the fifteen surviving grandchildren on my paternal side, three of us are confirmed queers, plus a few more likely suspects. Even though at least 20% of my generation is gay and out to varying degrees, our gayness is not outwardly acknowledged by the extended family. Within my immediate family, it is at least acknowledged, as evidenced by those recent letters to my mom and to my dad.

My cousin and I concluded that I’m the weird one who doesn’t fit. Everyone else in my family is perfectly content Not Talking About It. “It” is a versatile pronoun and can be applied to any variety of thing. My attitude is generally along the lines of “Let’s talk about it! It’s important that we talk about it! Why aren’t you people talking?” My family is usually looking at me through squinted eyes or staring off into space, wishing I would shut up already.

That desire to talk and converse helped me out later, though. Saturday night I found myself at a local brewpub for a friend’s birthday party, where I met another friend’s sister, Michelle, who was visiting from California. We chatted and I asked typical small-talk questions like “where are you from?” and learned that she lives in a valley between the Bay and Sacramento. Then I was asked what I did earlier, given the abnormal blue-sky day. “I was downtown at the Prop 8 protest,” I replied.

It was then that I learned that Michelle had voted FOR Proposition 8. Wow. I probably blinked involuntarily several times. I took a deep breath. Then I practiced every listening skill I’ve ever learned and dove into one of the better conversations I’ve had in a long time.

11/11

My Veterans Day Tradition:

Dear [friend name here]:  Once again it is 11/11 (at least it is here in the states, not sure what day it is where you are!), and I want to express my gratitude to you for the service you gave our country. While I realize that many people give service, in different ways, I also know and believe that the kind of service that you offered is of a type that requires a special acknowledgment.

Thank you.

I hope you are doing well.

with love,
Mossie

South Florida Preview

Yes, it is an exceptionally bloggy day.

Yesterday N came downstairs to see TW. Her phone sent me this picture of his lovely gams, reminding me of the exquisite fashion sense we will see displayed when we go visit her family in South Florida for Christmas.

I can hardly wait.

S.A.D. & Time

SAD = Seasonal Affective Disorder.

SAD = Standard American Diet.

. . .

Time to remember that my dismembered health is more within my control than I believe.

Time to pull out the happy-lights at home and use them regularly.

Time to cut out the sugar.

Time to move my limbs, stretch my spine, flood my cells with oxygen, feed myself air and water and whole foods.

Time to heal.

. . .

Can We Yes

Another Letter

Dear Dad,

Yesterday when we talked on the phone I told you – somewhat haltingly – about the intense week it’s been for me emotionally. I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me, these conversations that you and mom and I have been increasingly willing to have. In the past we have agreed to disagree, and left it at that. In an effort to avoid conflict, we’ve also avoided topics that hold a lot of meaning and importance. I’m glad that for the sake of closeness and connection that we are willing to talk more, to hear each other, stretching ourselves where we have different points of view.

Writing the letter to mom a couple weeks ago, and writing this letter to you now helps me clarify my thoughts and express things in a way that will (hopefully) not seem as confrontational as if I were to tell you these things on a phone call. In the past I have not shied away from confrontation, but I found that between us, as father and daughter, confrontation did not cultivate the kind of relationship I want to have with you. There are challenges and drawbacks to every form of communication, and it’s my intention to draw us closer, rather than create distance, by these letters. I am hopeful you will accept it in the spirit it is intended.

On Tuesday night, I was a wreck. My chest was tight with nervousness. Although I jumped around my house laughing and dancing and crying with joy as Senator Obama became President-elect Obama, and although I watched his sober and inspiring acceptance speech with rapt attention, I was really waiting for news from California. At some point, late into the night, I went to bed, hopeful that the numbers on Proposition 8 would shift as I slept.

But when I awoke, the results were clear. In an effort to override the California Supreme Court’s ruling in May, which held that sufficient justification did not exist for the state to deny the fundamental right of marriage to same-sex couples, the people of California decided to amend the constitution. I was heartsick.

For two days I cried often and spontaneously. I needed to protect myself from this sorrow, and I came up with the following scenario:

Looking at the map of the United States, county-by-county, at the huge swaths of so-called “red” areas, I think about the people who are horrified about who we elected to be president. If California voters had confirmed the CA Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage by refusing to change the constitution, I think there would be evangelical churches and households convinced that this country had gone the way of Satan. I don’t think that would have been good for this nation as a whole.  We need unity, I told myself, not further fracturing.

I probably told myself that so I could withstand the emotional meltdown I was experiencing. The beach wedding to my sweetheart I had envisioned wouldn’t include a marriage license. At least not anytime soon. Thousands of marriages performed this summer were now in murky legal legitimacy, including my friends’ and my cousin’s. My devastation was palpable.

In an email to a friend, I wrote:

When schools were desegregated in Brown v. Board of Education, the language about integration was “all deliberate speed.”  I’ve read that the actual literary meaning of that phrase means slowly, not quickly as many have assumed it means.  When it comes to equal marriage rights, perhaps the same approach is right. A friend told me, “The dinosaurs will be extinct soon. Things will be made right, eventually.”

Though these things may be true, that the country needs unity right now and that things will change, probably in my lifetime, it doesn’t change the here and now. It doesn’t change the stark reality that second-class citizenry is considered acceptable to more than 50% of those voting in California last week.

Last night someone asked for my “thoughts about the Mormons and Proposition 8.” My response didn’t at all capture my thoughts and emotions on the subject. I think what I said in the moment was that there were individuals prominent in the LDS church on both sides of Prop 8. I was thinking of Steve Young, whose family gave $50,000 to fight the amendment. What I really wanted to say in response to the question was that my feelings overshadowed anything I was thinking about it.

And Dad, yesterday when we talked, you were dismayed that the LDS church was attracting so much ire from those who had hoped to preserve the rights of same-sex couples to marry. “There were lots of churches involved,” you said. “Besides, the Church didn’t tell anybody how to vote. They told people to vote their conscience.”

Today I went to the official church website to see what I could find. Rather than look only at analysis or opinion or response from others, I wanted to see what the church itself was saying. It had a lot to say. It’s been over sixteen years since I’ve regularly attended an LDS church service. During my childhood and adolescence, my impression was as you described -  that the church would never tell a person how to vote, but would encourage careful study and prayerful consideration before making a decision. So I was surprised when I saw what was read from the pulpit of every congregation in California. The church acknowledges that it does not endorse specific candidates or platforms, but will not hesitate to urge its members to support the California amendment with their means and their time. They even created a video, instructing members how to help destroy the marriages of thousands of people.

A friend of mine, living in Salt Lake, wrote the following in response to reports of people reacting violently toward individuals and places of worship:

I also wanted to point out that not all [M]ormons supported the proposition. In fact there are shattered wards and neighborhoods all over California, and even some in Utah. Those people are appalled at what the leadership of their religion chose to do, what their neighbors chose to do, and are shaken to their core. Some of them are leaving the faith they grew up in. Some of them are desperately trying to remain in their churches to keep the conversations open and work at change from within.  . . .  Does every Mormon deserve our hatred? No. And their religious symbols do not deserve desecration. If we do so we become what their leadership has painted us as being.

There are those who are calling for restraint, for bridge-building, for communication. Dad, I do hope you are correct, that the church will not excommunicate its members who opposed the amendment. Nevertheless, I must admit I was troubled by the extent to which the church of my upbringing went to such lengths, under a banner of freedom of speech. Along those lines, I think that the peaceful protests at church headquarters are appropriate. We are blessed to live in a country where exercising our rights to speech, to vote, and to protest are still mostly available. But it is imperative that speech and protests be kept civil, for so many reasons. I am disheartened by reports of “bigot” being spraypainted on donors’ cars and homes, and of personal attacks, verbal or otherwise. I can’t imagine that anyone’s mind will be changed or heart will be softened by such behavior.

Gratefully I am past my long-standing and utterly debilitating anger at the church, in a general sense, although perhaps not past the hurt. The anger did not serve me, and ultimately caused me personal harm. My emotions are now in a few places:  squarely in sadness, sure, but also in cautious hope and in deep gratitude for the family relationships we share. Families are forever, after all.

You have always disparaged those who took the gospel to be a sword, a tool of condemnation. Those who “threw away” their kids would find themselves surprised at judgment day, you said. I am blessed to have been raised by parents who taught me that relationships are the only thing I will take with me from this world, including my relationship with God.

In my despair, I remind myself that my parents and my sister love me, that they try to understand me, that my partnership is valued and honored within our family unit, if not by the social and legal institutions from which I, and others, long for recognition. Dad, though our mental understanding of God may differ, I firmly believe that the divine force that underlies our beliefs is One. So although I am in despair, I also remind myself that my relationship with and knowledge of God is boundless, is pure Love, and is ultimately beyond description.

The tears come at seemingly odd moments, especially as I address the painful irony that as an adult-child, I did get married, bought a house, and was legitimate. Now that I’m finally in a relationship that is one I can and want to sustain with integrity for the rest of my life, it’s unsanctioned. I was finally honest, and as a result, lost the privileges I enjoyed from having a partnership that was acknowledged, supported, and protected by law, culture, and society.

I didn’t write this letter to try to convince you of anything, or to somehow show you that the church is bad or wrong. I wrote it because I wanted you to know how I felt, and I wanted you to see what I saw when I went to the church’s website.

I’m looking forward to seeing you at Thanksgiving, Dad. I love you dearly. And although my heart aches at this current setback, I pray that one day you will once again be the father of a bride at my wedding.

Love,

M

A Story from the Primaries

Usually I feel ill-equipped to talk about race. At all. Even/especially as a descriptor of other human beings.

The very avoidance of talking about race at all is perhaps itself evidence of my social positions and all the attendant privileges that go along with those positions. Whether it’s due to white guilt or some other nauseating form of self-indulgence, I often believe myself incompetent to speak about matters of race.

Today is no exception. I still consider myself ill-equipped. But earlier this afternoon, chatting with a friend, I was reminded of a story I hadn’t yet recounted here:

Linkage

Three things to share:

1.  Personal Relationships and Equality.  If you don’t read Pilgrimgirl’s blog, I highly recommend it.

2.  Recovering Straight Girl’s post yesterday on religion, same-sex marriage, and California’s Proposition 8.

3.  RSG’s post today on Prop 8, marriage equality, and the effect on children.

* Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with my parents, following up on the conversation that prompted The Letter.  I’ll likely write more on this later, as it unfolds.

A Letter

Dear Mom,

We talked on the phone earlier today and I wished you a happy birthday. I’m glad you got the card and Pra*rie Home Companion DVD.  I haven’t seen it. Frankly, I don’t really like the radio show. But it seemed like the kind of movie that wouldn’t have much cursing and is wholesome.  I thought you’d appreciate that.

Since we last talked, I’ve thought a lot about our conversation and how to answer your question about what I want you to tell people about my domestic life. Where I come from, and where you still live, that’s the way conversations go about women’s lives.  And probably men’s lives too, with the added twist of what they do to make money. So-and-so is married and has this many kids and the oldest is this age and the youngest is that age, and the genders are such-and-such and their extracurricular activities are this and that.

So when you ran into Holly R., who knew me from elementary school through high school, and when she visited you today, that’s the flavor of the conversation. She asked to see a recent photo of me, and you showed her my law school graduation. “She’s always been such a pretty girl,” you told me she said. You told her I was divorced and you told me you weren’t sure what to tell her about my love life. You are always so protective of others’ privacy, and I know this about you. You’ve never been one to gossip. At all. So you are genuinely puzzled and want to know what I would like for you to say.

As I told you, I’d like it if you’d tell people I am in love. I am happy. I am in a good relationship, and I strive to be healthy. Being closeted, or hiding the fact that I am in love with a woman, is completely uninteresting to me. Hiding feels toxic. It feels antithetical to having an open and unencumbered spirit.

In another part of the conversation, I told you that I am tired of fighting all the time, and I am consciously trying to be in a space of acceptance with myself and educating myself and my fellow creatures. I like to have conversations with people, to share my perspective, and to hear others’ perspectives. I find more personal peace that way than by keeping an energy of fighting. You mentioned that I am not as “militant” as I once was, that I used to have a lot of causes that would get me riled up. That’s true – I did. But I don’t have the energy or inclination to fight anymore. I’m too tired.

And these two parts of the conversation are related. When I was younger, I would have been very in-your-face about being queer/nonheterosexual. Even (or especially) when I was perceived as heterosexual and was legally married. And now, I’m more measured in my approach. As I told you, I want you to tell Holly, or anybody else in the small town where you live, whatever you want. I’d prefer it if you were honest and matter-of-fact, but that’s up to you. It’s your choice to communicate whatever is most comfortable to you.

Many of us who are in the so-called sexual minority, who came from conservative small towns and experienced what we did there, have since left with barely a look back. We left for a variety of reasons. Being open about who we are was ill-advised, and in some cases it was incredibly dangerous and heartbreaking. Do you remember what the high school principal told my friend David when he complained about being harassed for being perceived as gay? The principal told him to quit acting so gay if he didn’t want to be harassed. It was not a particularly nurturing environment. I hope that things are different now, fifteen years later, and that the gay kids at that high school receive more support than David did. For this and for many other reasons, many of us leave. And the people who stay there usually don’t hear much about our lives in whatever city or socially progressive region to which we migrate.

So I am here now, in my lezzie-friendly Portland home, wondering if Holly even knows a gay person. Or more accurately, if she knows that she knows. And yes, there is a large part of me that hopes you will tell her that I am in love with a woman, that I feel more like myself than I have ever before in my life, that I am content, and that I feel more safe and affirmed where I live now than I ever imagined I could feel in Utah. Because Holly, my childhood friend, deserves to know that I am not alone or miserable or waiting for a man to want me. I am partnered. I’d like to get married. And my desire to get married, and my cousin’s recent wedding to his sweetheart in California, and my friends’ marriage in Massachusetts – none of these things threaten the sanctity of your marriage, or Holly’s marriage, or the core principles underlying commitment and the important social recognition and relationship strengthening that result from the word and institution of marriage.

But it’s up to you. You can tell people what you want. I hope you will tell them the truth. It matters. It matters to me, it matters to Holly, it matters to all of us who came from places where our Being-ness wasn’t acceptable to the majority.

I love you, Mom.  Happy birthday.

m

On Top

Me:  Tonight’s P2 meeting was very effective.

Her:  Get your effective ass in bed, right now.

Me:  Excuse me?  Who’s on top in this relationship?

Her:  Right now, I am because I told you to get your effective ass in bed.

Several moments of silence.

Her:  So who do you think is on top in this relationship?

Me:  Me!  Duh!

Agreements

Last weekend for TW’s birthday we went to Carson Hot Springs and have now deemed it a satellite location of Camp France. Yes, it was just that good, although the old timey “Shhh, Ladies Resting” signs were nowhere to be found.  After detoxifying with a mineral springs soak, hot towel wrap, and sauna, but before we crashed and slept for eleven hours, we made a series of pinky promises over dinner.  We take our pinky promises very seriously.  These P-agreements have become codelike reminders:

P1:  Say it.  Whether it’s a bad dye job, a stain on a shirt, wishing for a change of plans, or bad breath, we promise not to keep it to ourselves, but to say it out loud.  And nicely (see P4).

P2:  Organize and Dream.  We’ve committed to having weekly “P2″ meetings, where we plan, work on dreamlists, and address money matters.

P3:  Posture.  Shoulders back makes a huge difference in attitude and outlook.

P4:  Sense of Humor.  As in, don’t get pissed when the other makes a P1 or P3 reminder.

P5:  Conversation Fouls aka Accent/Joke/Story Quota.  Rather than make a nasty comment about the annoying middle-aged midwestern accent or the surfer rendition of “Nice!” or the story told twelve-too-many times, we will gently say P5.  As in shut the f*ck up – I’ve had enough of that, but keeping with P4.  As we just discovered, this can also apply to brand new bad jokes, like invoking any Carpenters song. Ever.

We’ll see how long these last.

Perfect Moment

In the background of the She Loves Camp France videos you can hear a song that TW and I are all mushy over, Darden Smith’s “Perfect Moment,” off his 2002 Sunflowers album. It has become our anthem of sorts, as we revel in perfect Camp France Moments and marvel that we somehow eluded each other for a decade, until we had each healed enough to know a life together.  We found each other, barely, before we lost our chance, and the result is a series of blessed moments, strung together. Together.

Lyrics to “Perfect Moment” by Darden Smith

(posted with permission):

Age(less)

When I wake up and look at her in the early morning light, the years shimmer across her face. I see the wholeness of her, the faces she’s already worn and those yet to come.

My knuckles grace her cheek, fingertips drawn across her brow, thumb lightly grasping her chin.  She opens her eyes, alert and soft at the same time.

She is unwistful about age. Complaints about aging bore me. Gray light gathers outside the northern windows.

“My wife,” I breathe. Though it may be too soon to say such things, I say them anyway.

Ten Years

It’s been ten years since Matthew Shepard was found tied to a fence outside Laramie, Wyoming.

As I mentioned in the Cuckoo post, I was in a vulnerable mental and emotional space when news of this particular hate crime became public.  While I was hospitalized, I didn’t read the news.  In the week after my release from the hospital, I didn’t read the news.  The day I first heard about it was my first day back to work at a small university.  Hearing such a shocking, horrible tale on that day will forever be branded in my life-memory.  I will always associate Matthew Shepard and the crimes that took his life with one of the darkest and scariest time periods of my own life.  As I write this, I choke up.  I lived.  He did not.  The magnitude of that fact is not lost on me.  I am grateful.  I am humbled.

Today’s Lesbiatopia article is not only a ten-year memorial to Matthew, but is also dedicated to all those who have suffered hate and violence.  I encourage you to click over there, to read it, and to consider the implications, particularly with the upcoming election.

Update: Go see what Lesbian Dad posted about this.  Go.  Right now.  After seeing The Laramie Project in Salt Lake City, at a production in which one of the actors was from Laramie and played himself, I was struck by the incredible impact Matthew’s life and death had on that town, on mine, on so many others.

Noisy

My mind chatters a lot.

She Loves Camp France

I’ve briefly described how and why my home with TW is called Camp France. Whatever the origin, the name is sticking, and word is spreading about what a great place it is, Camp France.  It’s known, at least in limited circles.  It’s not just the chickens, or the backyard hot springs, but a multitude of goodness.

In August, while I was away for a few days, TW and Emmae (she of the “Are You Carny?” fame) made me a surprise. They were hanging out and enjoying the inherent wonderfulness of Camp France, and came up with what follows. 

Here, in three takes, is the marvelously quirky ode to Loving Camp France, starring Emmae.  Remember, the camp factor is tres importante (probably SFW – no nudity, all towel):

PDX to BOS

He likes that I call him a grrl, but he doesn’t identify as transgender.  He once told me that those who know him best refer to him in the feminine. I’ve always considered him one of my favorite grrlfriends, in part because he can dish like no other. And he speaks with Wise Woman. And he squeals.

So I Failed the Bar Exam. Twice.

There you have it. I failed the bar exam. Twice.

It turns out, though, that failing the bar exam is not really what I needed to confess. I thought that publicly acknowledging it would relieve me of my burden. I thought it was really straightforward, that I just had to get up the nerve to say the words.  But it’s not easily pegged.

it’s on its way

but it might need another day or two to keep filtering out.

it might not be worth the wait.

and I’m blushing over the suspense.

hype is, after all, a distraction.  throwing fur around.

Confession. The Teaser Edition.

I’ve had a confession to make for some time.  I mentioned it briefly here, four months ago.

But I’ve felt ashamed and hid from addressed my shame with silence.  As if silence could ever ameliorate or assuage and not accelerate.

Though my confession is not yet ready for whatever nebulous consumption happens via this site, it is bubbling, creaking, surfacing, like digestive gas becoming a belch.

Four posts by someone I don’t know have bolstered my resolve to finally come clean, to confess.  1 2 3 4 Those four posts have been up for over two months, but I’ve saved them, gingerly, waiting for the day I felt strong enough to lay out my confession here.

This is not that day.

This is the teaser day.  But I’m feeling that burp coming up, and it will inevitably burst forth.

You’re excited, right?