Loving terrorists to disconnection

I killed a cockroach in our kitchen the other day

It was tragic.

The fascists in the FBI wants to say trans people are domestic terrorists

            And yeah, you could say settler colonial patriarchy is like cockroaches,

            but I don’t hate cockroaches THAT much

            They remind us that our separation from earth is a tidy illusion

That we (and our children) still bear the consequences for all the earthling homes we destroy

for a semblance of power over ours

No, colonial patriarchy is more like laughing gas –

At first, to the one who inhales, maybe it’s a giddy, power buzz,

But when it’s the air we’re breathing,

we all get balance problems, dizziness, consciousness says goodbye,

            Eventually death

            for all who breathe.

So yeah, call me a terrorist to fear for growing a love garden.

Plants are still the only way we know to make oxygen.

We’re going to keep oxygenating this culture

            and the life that’s growing is the kind of laughing that doesn’t stop

                        until (or through) crying, and grieving, and protecting and expanding, delighting, and loving

Trans people make a kind of freedom

            you can only know through giving

            every flower, microbe, and fluttering fern

                        within you a chance

            wear those bootyful pants,

            set off your sparkling eyes with some glitter and galactic gifts

            let those heels and calves strut a story that’ll stupefy even the stalwart silencers

            let your body be king, be queen, be mother, be anything or everything in between

Mother earth, meaning us, all these eco-systems, all these beings, and elements,

movements toward life

toward decomposing transforming and recycling to make new life

Trans people are experts at that

            Turning away – disconnection, ridicule, fear and blame

            into towards – trying, together, tripping and catching, flipping and rhyming

            rejection with reflection, reveling in invitation

When we don’t know how to reckon with the misplaced contours

and strangely shaped ‘what for?’s

            We unweapon the binary and blithely  

            Blend up and balance this batch of confusion into

            The sweetest brightest embodiments

So along with making more oxygen, let’s keep blooming and blooming

this society into a more beautiful garden

            than we’ve ever felt

Mosaic of Mycelium

Part 1

Picture our ancestral family tree

Let’s travel down the trunk into the soil, and out to the tips of the roots — this is an origin story

Around 1.6 billion years ago, fungi were the original house mothers,

they gave some genes to bacteria and lichen to create the first plants.

This mycelium family functioned as roots for the plants as plants evolved to grow their own.

We’re all descended from these mycelium

I’m gonna be so bold as to argue that queer and trans people are especially descended

The mycorrhizal network are magical messengers, helping trees and plants send news about pathogens and nutrients to each other,

Queers make language to connect and nurture

I use “they/them” to be a person in charge of my own gender,

to remind us we are each made of our ancestors and loved ones.

And ‘they’ warn about the patriarchal plague of the binary

Mycelium decompose and transform the impossible —

from partnering with termites to chew up French colonial buildings in West Africa

to turning today’s oil spills into healthy water and soil

Queers decompose “men’s and women’s wear”

into fashion as art for all bodies,

We transform the nuclear family where at least one parent’s always tired

to a co-parenting trio or quad, or energized community who raise kids together

Every time we garner that second glance, every time we ask how someone wants to be called,

how they want to move in their body

we’re rotting misogyny and rape culture to grow embodied consent culture,

Transforming bodies from     conforming products,

to processes of pleasure

Along with mycelium we work at the root,

Radically undermining oppressive systems

through starving them of their primary form of sustenance

– our ashamed participation.

Part 2 – content warning, “legal” transmisogyny

Since 2021, 1,444 anti-trans bills were considered in congresses across the United States

146 have become law so far, outlawing access to bathrooms, education, sports,

accurate birth certificates, denying human rights,

reducing personhood to whatever the doctor said was between our baby legs,

(stripping children for genital inspection to play sports

(and then accusing drag queens of grooming))

medically necessary healthcare for trans people has been outlawed in 23 states,

            cis people, we need y’all to step up!

Patriarchy is throwing quite a temper tantrum

They think they’re crying tears made of fungicide

But we are not unmemorable microbes or forgettable tokens,

 “Thank you maam! Uh, Sir.” “Doctor” – we are whole moments,

monuments of movement and birthing,

ever more deeply circling,

illuminating, infiltrating the invasion

and inviting all those hating

to join the rest of the earth in our chorus,

when we work for all of us,

we shape a future far beyond a world of nations,

along with the global Indigenous majority we celebrate all our relations,

all our entangled and enlivened vibrations,

we are dedication to every stage of creation,

every decomposition gives life to new life

and we’re on a mission

to compost patriarchy and the binary,

Punishment and extractive hierarchy,

Victim blaming and the illusion of meritocracy

it’s our ambition to make wholeness mean habitat

and the ancestors of our ancestors’ ancestors are prescient in that,

and the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s children are emphatic that

we heal, that we be still and listen,

Safety is co-created —

the mycelial network flowing through the oldest pine tree in Utah for the past 4,000 years

can tell us that – we need each of us to believe

we are nurturing seeds,

meaningful messages,

clues about directions to travel and how to transpire toward collective liberation,

at the core of our foundation as a people of this earth

We all want connection and belonging

Throughout all of human history, those we now call two-spirit people, trans people,

high priestesses, shaman, gender-bending queens and warriors

Have been weaving the basket of humanity together

Helping everyone remember

That only when we see all earth’s beings as blessings

will our bodies truly feel safe

When our love enables each of us our fullest selves,

there’s no end to the magic we co-create

Thriving through apocalypse

So. How do we survive apocalypse?

I’m not gonna play around as the white [manly-enough] privileged dude to pretend that I’m the one to tell you the answer to that.

And, I’m a psychotherapist, so yeah it is my responsibility to support folks in surviving whatever or whomever is trying to kill them

And, I’m a queer psychotherapist, so y’all, Listen Up!

This is a PSA for all who are wondering what the heck we can do when our guts are screaming CODE RED like we might never get to drink coffee again

(sorry if you hadn’t thought about that)

Or eat pizza, or ice cream (don’t worry those aren’t going anywhere)

I’m just saying this is a PSA for all who are wondering

Like, what’s the protocol for apocalypse?

What the [eff] are we supposed to do?!!

If you’re really wondering,

you know already

Between us, I think we already have what it’s gonna take

And lots of us – WAY more of us than the news will ever let us know –

Are already doing what it’s gonna take

And, I know lots of us are feeling lost and kinda – a lot – scared

So this poem’s for us

(In addition to a PhD in clinical psychology I’m also a pastor’s kid so I know sometimes I get a little preachy but just humor me and roll with the ideas)

I’m gonna try to synthesize – sum up and highlight important parts of – some of the wisdom that brilliant indigenous folks have been conjuring up for millennia, and more recently adrienne maree brown gathered into her books emergent strategy and pleasure activism

on how to survive the end of the world

OK first I need to rephrase my question cuz I’m all about surviving

But I am All About thriving

How can we thrive through apocalypse?  

How can we school that apocalypse so good that every filthy rich wall street magician turns his multiple mansions and estates into gardens run by school kids growing veggies and herbs they deliver to homes for the elderly who are out to pasture in dream homes where they can pass along their stories to the youngsters who bring them dinner?

  1. Think about what you love, and what will give you pleasure in the long run. Do it.
    1. In moderation, in the ecosystem congruity with everything else that you love doing, live saying ‘yes!’ and ‘no’ always in the service of ‘yes’ to what is life-giving
  2. Notice what feels like it really works. Notice what makes you feel like you can do it, like you’re capable and competent, ready to learn, connected with others who are learning.
    1. Try and do those things – that make you feel capable and competent – for other people too. When you don’t feel capable and competent, stop! Say no, in service to your ‘yes’ to what helps you know you can do it
  3. Pay attention to what you pay attention to – do you want more or less of it in the world? If less, pay attention to it less; if more, you know!
  4. Listen. To what makes it easier, to what makes it harder, that can be the same thing, we learn as we go. It’s about adapting, and we might learn the same thing, many times 😉 Let everything teach you.
  5. Think of yourself like an oak tree, covered in trampoline – whatever doesn’t help you grow, let it bounce off; what does, absorb it in, let it go down to your roots, which are intertwined with lots of others’ roots
    1. If someone hurts you, they hurt all of us, and they need to repair the damage they did to the ecosystem
  6. Because all of us need all of us. Independence is a complete illusion born of imperialism. Interdependence is the way this entire universe has always – will always – function.
  7. Which is pretty handy, because if you ever feel out of ideas, connect with somebody. Brainstorm, imagine every possible solution and then create some more possibilities.
  8. As you’re doing all of this, make sure to make time for reflection, writing, document your data.
  9. When you find solutions, practice them; when you’re exploring solutions, experiment, mess around see what works and learn from what doesn’t.
  10. So I know this piece got a little abstract but I hope I could condense the basic tenants of emergent strategy that adrienne maree brown has gathered and presented for us. The last overarching theme underlying everything is, live with intention. What we do, how we live, how we relate to other people, matters. Do it on purpose.

I’ll close with a quote from the book: “The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice and pleasure, the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go.”

Ode to life’s small pleasures

My body is convinced that some pollen native to Missouri is actually a treacherous threat and

Thus, it would be better for me to not be able to breathe

At all

I am sitting in front of the air filter silently counting “in –1 2 3 4 pause – out 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8”

having been unable to take a proper breath for several hours now.

My beau perceives the crisis

Stands behind me, hands on my shoulders,

Working tender confidence into my back

He spends 30 minutes

Trying to teach my lungs

The air is safe

Reminding me

My shoulders

don’t need to carry it all

Made up of words invented by Shakespeare

Resolve is made up of re (to do again), and solve (to effectively answer a problem)

When you’re bumping your gut along the lonely howl of quarantine

It’s easy to think this state is fixture – an existence established

Nah, let the resolve embrace you

Yes, we have to solve the same evils, over and over again

With them always showing up pretending to be something different, someone new

Don’t be fooled

Re solve your hesitation, re solve your uncertainty, re solve your chagrin

This kinda devil you know how to answer to

Start with the questions

Dawn the undressing of society’s luggage

There’s no traveling today

We’ve got homes to build

We’ve got economies to metamorphize

And ecosystems

Impartially

Patient

Noiselessly radiant

Securely generous

Their invitation unappeased

The last sound

The last sound I want to hear before I fall asleep

Is AarBear’s low growl snore

the way his dozing face looks like

A 30 year-old toddler

I expect him to be cozying a baby kitten

Or a kangaroo

Or maybe a bear cub

I’ve even checked before

And then he sleepy chuckled

maybe to something happening in the West Wing episode he’s nodding off to

Small smile slightly stretching his lips

I realized he love murmurs in appreciation

to, well, the universe

Loves being alive with all these beings

Lives to appreciate, laugh, comfort, and build

Platforms to hold us up, in whatever way will make it easiest for us to be us,

will reflect our light in dazzling rainbows of dancing shining symphonies

This is so effortless for him

He does it in his sleep

How to make change while in COVID-19 quarantine

  • [Some brainstormed ideas in April 2020]
  • Have a conversation in which you learn something and teach something
  • Call a relative or acquaintance w/whom you disagree and tell each other stories
  • Write your own stories. Write about what inspires you, about whom you care about, and what they do that makes you smile
  • Gather insights into what works to bring joy. Collect these things in whatever way brings you most pleasure – a list, a pile, an idea box, an Instagram story chain (Rocknebula)
  • Read, watch, listen to other people’s thinking, ideas, creativity (watch Instagram Rocknebula)
  • Notice what is most desirable for you
    • What would it require for anyone who also finds that pleasurable to experience it regularly?
  • Notice what annoys you.
    • What frustrates you, what tightens your jaw?
    • What becomes hot coals in your gut, burning because all they can do is burn
      • Where does their heat energy go?
      • Let it become adrenaline
      • You can choose what to fuel
  • Notice who else benefits from your anger
  • Notice who else benefits from your pleasure
  • Notice what and who you listen to when you have all the free time in the world. What leads you to listen? What keeps you listening?
  • Notice what questions you ask. What leads you to ask them?
  • Notice what you want. Notice what you enjoy. Enjoy what you enjoy.
  • Notice the expectations you have for yourself. Allow yourself the patience to expect in terms of values and fractals. What we value small we value big.
  • You are simultaneously acting out society’s problems and solutions, ways of being that undermine these problems. What we attend to grows.
  • You don’t have to think about whether it is a problem or a solution. Think about what you love, and why. About what brings you pleasure, now, and in a month, and in a year, and what you are grateful to yourself for now, and will be in a year, 5 years.
  • What do you do most effortlessly? (What feels effortless, even when it takes a LOT of effort?)
  • How do you love most effortlessly?
  • These are your gifts. Give them when doing so brings joy.
  • Smile whenever you can. And it’s OK to cry, deeper than you’ve ever cried before. The world is crying, and smiling, with you. Do both and love yourself for it.
  • You are an opportunity

and this

is an evolutionary moment.

Live how you love.

We need you to.

We need you, too.

Dialectic Irreverence to Dysphoria

Dialectic: The process of bringing two contradictory truths into synthesis
For example, full acceptance, and desire to change
Irreverence: Sauciness, disregard of things that are usually taken seriously

This poem is called Dialectic Irreverence to Dysphoria
(it’s a trans poem about my body)

Home
for me
would be a chest that’s all muscle
A bust of firmness and power
A voice that roars or sails in falsetto,
the same 4 octave range I had before testosterone, moved down an octave
Beastly legs that flutter or flurry across the dance floor
And between them,
The depends on the day or the dream
My brain thought I had a penis until I had sex
and couldn’t PIV [penis in vagina] like my subconscious expected
Thanks to some insightful incisive lovers and hella community support,
I LOVE my c***
[c***, by the way, is the only word encapsulating all aspects of “female” genitalia; I use it honorifically]

But I realized a few years ago
after a series of dreams in which I had a perfect, medium sized, beautiful c***
That maybe …
…
…

I get excited
Because I want one
because having one would feel so RIGHT
Not like (strap-on) loving to  **** **** **** right,
Like…
…
…
and hit a painting on the wall

I don’t know why I need this
my brain is just fricking convinced I have a penis
and I literally relearn I don’t on the daily
But my c*** and I are so fricking happy we Are Not breaking up

I’m polyamorous with my genitals
If I could waive a transformation wand I’d have a penis just above my vagina,
some balls I could magic on when I was in the mood
I think if we could put our bodies together like we put together Mr. Potato heads
there’d be a few of us who’d feel at home in that option

There’s a part of me who would love to rest in the big comfy, cozy king size bed
laden with pillows and poofy quilts that I imagine this body I just described would feel like
(Cis people: y’all live in this home, right?
Bodies that feel like 800 thread count sheets
a warm bubble bath?)

In real life my chest flexes strength and it’s pliable as hell
On top of my pecks, two little gopher borrows whose gophers only pop out for the right gardener
My voice is a cute guinea pig in a really small cage
Lost an octave when testosterone moved it down,
And another when I almost died and they had to trache into me,
(Vocal chords, like guinea pigs, are happiest in pairs
But one of mine got paralyzed so now I’ve got one lonely guinea pig in a 2 octave cage)
My legs are definitely beastly, dragons spitting glitter fire
Between them, insert my band’s song “… ”
I’m an adventure
Gophers, guinea pigs, and dragons

I reject the dysphoria binary of home versus adventure
I am in the serenity of soaring on open wings
There is joy in this dialectic irreverence to dysphoria
A co-creation of all of us
Lovers, family, community
We accept the comfy cozy bed we might imagine a body home could feel like,
and we irreverently kick off from the nest

we create embodied euphoria

And we fly

I think it’s the magic in this flight that made trans people the shaman, the medicine people,
in societies going back to the beginning of humanity
The trans body
is dialectically irreverent to intelligibility
The trans body is uncategorizable,
divine mystery
We are question marks
ending every assured assertion about ‘biological’ sex

Our bodies live in the place every person finds when they drop the script handed them

And search for holiness

Three years after death offered me lollipops soaked in chocolate

I’m reflecting on the experience.

When death asked me for a date, it was a dark and rainy night.
I was pedaling quick to meet friends,
someone driving a big hunk of metal didn’t bother to slow for a look, drove into me,
knocked out a few ribs,
shook my brain good

I was knocked out so some people cut my clothes off me, took me to the hospital with some sirens,
Put me in an incubator
Death came along with syrup dripping from his tongue then
Gave me some frosting coated candy canes
Said “Hey you look hungry. I just wanted to give you my number.
If you ever call, I’ll be waiting for you baby.”
I was hungry. Unconsciousness doesn’t feed the soul much.
I was looking for life, I was in the mood for a feast,
I figured life would come swooping in, wearing a beautiful white translucent gown,
Feeding me strawberries with her fingers
presenting a five course meal of green salad, lentil soup, roasted veggies, cheesy casserole, and blueberry pie

She never showed

I was hungry
For days
Weeks
Months
Death kept dropping by with his sugar
I fought
Hungry
In an empty room with a table and a phone
A post it with death’s number on it
My body was getting to be too much work for my soul
That post it was starting to glow
Those lollipops soaked in chocolate that death has promised me started to sound like a whole lot better than nothing
(all that life was feeding me)
my soul picked up the phone
said, “I can’t fight for this body anymore, this brain’s all busted and swollen, life forgot about us, she’s never bringing dinner,”
“Hey baby!” somebody said
“Yo kid”
“Child”
there was a chorus of them, souls in this room with me,
they took the phone out of my hand, said “shit son, you don’t even like lollipops!”
“I’m hungry,” I said, “I thought life would come and bring me dinner but she never showed.
I can’t take care of this body any more, and this brain turned into a baby.”
“Child,” said the chorus
Life doesn’t come knock on your door like a trick-or-treater
Life isn’t sitting around creating, you lazy mother f***.
We create life.

We’ve got your body, don’t worry about that
We made your salad, soup, veggies…we can’t make your casserole
Only a Minnesotan can make a hotdish proper enough for you, honey
We’ve been waiting,
We’ve been here holding you,
And you’re just staring at that telephone like it calls someone
Like there’s a soul who loves you who isn’t in this room with you right now
Come on baby
Stop thinking you’re alone
Stop waiting for life to come along

Make it

We need you

make some freaking casserole

 

(December 7, 2015)