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Why do I keep moving? –
Because: sometimes I feel more comfortable in strangeness when it’s a strangeness that I have chosen. I’ve always been in orbit, I know how to operate on the outside of things.
Because: When a stranger has the generosity to show you your own brilliance it’s the most humbling and precious gift. Sometimes I feel more seen by folk I just met than by those who’d claim to know me. Because some of those who ‘know’ me have forgotten to keep looking. The more you look the more you see. And what am I missing?? Have I forgotten to keep looking?! To keep ‘making strange’?
Chaos
Mess
Permission to be Messy.
Permission to Be.
Feeling Seen – a Practice in Joy
:
I am six years old and terrified of childbirth. The thought keeps me up at night. I agonize for a week before I ask papa, on the landing between the washing line and my room with hippos and lions on the wallpaper, whether girls sometimes marry girls (‘Girl’ being the only word I had for myself then). Casually, gently, he says Yes, sometimes they do. He heads on down the stairs and I walk into my room and feel the relief sink into my body, slow my breath, lift my chin.
Going to my first theatre show with my ma, aged 6. Peter Pan the pantomime. Ma says, look – Peter Pan is being played by a woman – and I am delighted. I want to be her. To me she is what freedom looks like.
For our last concert in Slovenia I wear my fabulous moustache and everyone loves it, making a huge deal out of it – taking photos, laughing, telling me with surprise in their voices how much it suits me. I know, duh. Initially validated, as the reactions continue heaviness settles into my gut. And then Sophia and Stefan who don’t even blink. Don’t comment either to affirm or question just offer me dumplings. Thank you.
Gabe gives me the perfect haircut I never even knew I wanted. I don’t have the words to explain that particular act of kindness but I think he understands.
When someone doesn’t ask me about my past names. Doesn’t demand explanations. Doesn’t feel entitled to ‘understanding’. Doesn’t need me to be anything else other than what I am right in this moment.
When I see queer and trans folk taking care of one another, when I feel them loving fiercely, when I know they are committed to their own and each others resilience and reconciliation between each other because we don’t have that many options. We need each other. And we know it. And we will hold and fight for each other because we know
we are not disposable.
Language
:
Hannah asks me when I was last in Germany, whether I would go back to live there. I don’t know. I never felt at home there and then there’s also the pronouns problem (maybe part of why I never felt at home there).
I mean, I have spent so little time in Germany in the last years that I don’t even know what non-binary folk there are using for pronouns. So I google it and find an entry on non-binary wiki which has lots of cute alternatives like mapa and pama instead of mama and papa, but when I click on the link to the page for gender neutral pronouns it invites me to enter editing mode – because the page doesn’t exist yet.
Hardly rigorous research but then the point is that I would wish that it wasn’t difficult to find.
The more at home in myself I feel
=
the freer I become
=
the less I am willing to compromise.
German is the language of my early imagination. It will always be special to me. There are three pronouns in German: der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neutral). Except that the neutral option das means it.
yeah that’s not really an option for me.
After an intense and mostly beautiful solstice gathering in Mexico last year I find myself hurting. At this gathering in particular there was much focus on the binary of ‘divine feminine’ (moon and earth) and the ‘divine masculine’ (sun and fire). I struggle with it because I don’t think the gentle people I met mean to cause harm but for me at least, as non-binary, this worldview perpetuates a subtle and deep violence. In German the sun is die Sonne (feminine) and the moon is der Mond (masculine). So growing up (partly due also to being raised in a feminist household) I associated the ‘solar qualities’ of strength and tenacity with ‘femininity’ and a gentle nurturing ‘lunar energy’ with ‘masculinity’ - if we’re gonna briefly flirt with a binary here. Or course it’s connected to the role models I had but I also wonder what it has to do with language. I ask Hannah if that resonates with her and she looks at me over a plate of turmeric-covered salad, pauses a minute in surprise and says, yes – actually.
And then there’s that thing that we can only see the moon because it reflects light from the sun. so if
sun = masculinity
and
moon = femininity
then feminine power relies on masculine light and strength.
hi.
THAT’S NOT LIBERATION.
And also –
FUCK THE BINARY.
Returning from the gathering I try to explain my sense of grief to my ex-lover and apparent friend who is frustrated and tells me to just get over it. Rebecca who I have met exactly two minutes ago says tell me, I want to hear. Listens as I stumble through my confusion and hurt and suddenly yell in the middle of the warm evening street:
I’m an alien I’ll always be an alien and you know what trans and non-binary folk are fucking prophets because we have wisdom none of you cis-folk have!
- Yes,
says Rebecca
you are.
As I walk her home her own grief spills out. She turns to me saying you are going to hold spaces of healing for people, I see that in your future.
Written in May 2019 for the zine Elsewhere