Equestrian Philosophy

Horses teach mindfulness really well too. Actually, I was surprised to find out how difficult some people find horseback riding. I think the key is to be comfortable in your body, because some of those maneuvers, I mean, they are kind of sensual. Like doing a pelvic thrust to get your horse to start walking. And then you have to kick it to change speeds, but you can’t be mean about it, it’s more like an insistent nudge. Maybe the best part of horseback riding is that they tell you to fuck off if you’re making mistakes. I’ve never been bucked off a horse, not when I was a kid anyway. I have had to calm a galloping horse down though, which was intense because no one had trained me how to do that. Her companion horse got angry and took off after bucking off the other rider, and so she went full tilt after him, and I was stuck on the back. We let him run it out, he came back for oats, it was fine.

I was sent to horse camp when I was a preteen. I got short changed though, I was stuck in a little kid class and we only rode horses a couple times. Aside from that they drove us around in a big buick. I remember one time I was getting my horse ready and this little girl came up and asked “Is your horse’s name Satin or Satan?” And I was like, oh honestly, where the hell did you come from? My horse’s name is Satin of course!

A horse named Satan indeed!

The best part of riding horses is that you have to dote on them, you can’t just push them around. It takes at least half an hour to get a horse ready. And you have to feed them and give them treats. And you have to calm them down after or they get all foamy sweaty, and horse sweat is gross. And you have to look after their feet, because sometimes you have to clean the frog or there’s a pebble in there or something. And you have to be gentle about that too or you will get such a kick. But you can also have boundaries with your horse, if they know you won’t let them get away with something then they are pretty docile. But again, you have to be careful with them because they are honestly huge and powerful.

I’d like to ride horses again.

So that’s why you guys feel like God!

Since I’ve begun embodying my gender more fully, the world reacts differently to me. Guys actually move off the sidewalk out of the way, it’s intense. And I can look people in the eye and it’s cool, no one hassles me. And I walk the way I normally walk too. And cars actually stop for me now, which is intense. I’m kind of glad I put this off so I could see the differences. Male privilege is no joke man. I’m so astounded, it’s bizarre, this is so weird!

But I’m trying to remember how to do my part. I’m cleaning more, which is intense, because it’s just this nice non violent activity. It sounds silly, but it is like a spiritual practice, to clean your own space. And to make your own food. God, I sound like my mother! Crap, but it’s true, but if you’re still stuck to a binary it’s hard to be mindful of those things.

I didn’t realize how different other people’s lives are. I was listening to music and reading a book, and my mom said “You can’t do those two things at once, your brain shuts off half of it.” And I was like, what the hell do you mean? Of course I can do both these things at once. I can do a bunch of things at once. I was listening to LA Woman and reading Gender Outlaw. Now I’m listening to Moby’s Everything Is Wrong and playing Katamari and cleaning. Laurel is coming over tonight and we’re going out to goof off, I don’t know what kind of transformation she’s undergone, but she says I won’t recognize her.

Mindfulness for the Video generation

I think what I love about Katamari is that it trains mindfulness really well, and it’s fun. It’s funny to think that the tv could be used to create mindfulness, but video games do it really well. All video games really. But they are just video games. Still, overcoming duality is intense, so I’m playing We Love Katamari, and it’s pretty fun. Pretty silly. The King of the Cosmos hasn’t yelled at me yet, and he used to do that all the time before Christmas. Crap! It’s like getting organized anyway, it’s very healing. A mandala for the MTV generation.

Put Down That Weapon

By Midnight Oil

grandcanyon
Originally uploaded by fit of pique.

This is my cousin Steven and I when we were at the Grand Canyon. My mom is holding a sign in the parking lot while taking this picture. It actually wasn’t a stupid thing, there was a really wide ledge about three feet below. It just looked really dumb. I think I am twelve here.

Actel and Video Games

I remember in Actel we had this one assignment where we read a fictional story about raising a genderless child. And the kid wore overalls and had a gender neutral name and a private place and basically the last time any one knew that persons gender was when they were born. And it was an experiment, so that person’s gender became a state secret. I thought it was such a fascinating concept, because this child baffled everyone and was able to just be who they really were. I always remembered that story, that was far better than the one about the girl locked in a closet on Venus. I don’t even remember who wrote it, or what it was called, but it always blew my mind.

I always wore overalls and boy clothes as a kid, I looked silly in girl clothes. Even my mom had to buy new baby clothes because the hand me downs from my sister made me look so ridiculous. One night I drew 33 super man cartoons. And my cousins made me watch Temple of Doom over and over and over. Well, it was exciting. I had an Indiana Jones computer game but I kept falling in the crocodile pit over and over. And that stupid ET game from Atari, crap! He just falls in a hole and you can’t ever get him out! That was such a depressing video game. I remember one game I liked was called Caveman Olympics but it had these weird neanderthals with heavily secure gender archetypes in place. And I didn’t like that much, so that was frustrating. But the concept was funny, I just didn’t like the sexism. And Duck Hunt got boring, too easy. Super Mario Brothers was fun though, I played all four of those. I wanted to be a baseball player, but I didn’t trust anyone so I decided not to. Getting hit in the face with a baseball, no way. I hated baseball practice. Kickball was fun though.

And then I switched to Katamari because no one dies, you just roll people up and make the universe. That’s fun. I’m going to go back to playing that for a while, because it makes me laugh. It’s even funnier than Ms Pac Man!

Dream

I had this great dream last night so I’ll tell you about it. I was sitting at a deli counter when this man sat next to me and passed me a little note on a piece of paper. It said “I know who you are. What do you want?” And I wrote back “Transformation everywhere.”

Gender Defenders

“For a while, I thought that it would be fun to call what I do in life gender terrorism. Seemed right at first – I and so many folks like me were terrorizing the structure of gender itself. But I’ve come to see it a bit differently now – gender terrorists are not the drag queens, the butch dykes, the men on rollerskates dressed as nuns. Gender Terrorists are not the female to male transsexual who’s learning to look people in the eye while he walks down the street. Gender terrorists are not the leader daddies or back seat Betties. Gender terrorists are not the married men, shivering in the dark as they slip on their wives panties. Gender terrorists are those who, like Ms. Millot, bang their heads against a gender system which is real and natural and who then use gender to terrorize the rest of us. These are the real terrorists: the Gender Defenders.”
– Kate Bornstein “Gender Outlaw” – 1994

Approved Treatment

I’m in touch with the medical community again and I’m back on the approved treatment for getting OFF psych meds, which is smoking marijuana. So that’s what I’m doing now, because marijuana stimulates the regrowth of neuronal pathways, which is why HIV pos people use it. One of the many reasons they use it, actually. It does amazing stuff for HIV positive people. And so my little brain is growing back together, and that’s good. I’m glad it’s getting itself back together. And I think the drugs are mostly out of my system now, I mean, it will probably take a year or two for them to flush out, maybe longer. The hard part of detoxing is over though, and that makes me happy.

There are a lot of mood disorders and so on among transgender people, because it’s a super oppressive situation to be in, I mean, ultimately I think it is the most oppressed position in this culture. And so of course people have problems when they start coming to terms with it, because it means deciding if you are ready to leave behind the world you have known. And so you look at EVERYTHING that is in the world, I mean, so much, because you need to know if that is a world you want to be a part of. And that’s why we go crazy, because the world is a dark place. And fuck no, I don’t want to be part of that world. But then people get suicidal, because it seems like the only world to exist. And you do want to live, I mean, you don’t want to go away for ever, so then you start hating yourself. Because if this is the world we live in and I am completely opposed to it, then I must be in the wrong because I’m the most marginalized of all minority groups. And people all seem to lack consensus, which reinforces those binaries more because they fight each other on those lines.

But then you really do wake up, and realize that life is more infinitely complex than all of those binaries. And the more complex it gets the more infinitely gorgeous it gets, to the point where you HAVE to stay. I mean, it’s too fucking gorgeous to toss the whole thing away. Which is why First Nations people allowed their young transgendered people to go on a shamanic quest, because part of that quest was divulging how to keep a community together. And so we make great community builders, because we really do try to understand everyone’s position on our journey to be who we are.

I don’t know any trans person who has actively shown their process in real time. I mean, ten years of this, man alive! And it is so personal, it’s terribly personal, and that’s why people don’t show it, because of shame. And people do shame it these days, because no one remembers what a shamanic quest looks like from the inside. All you know is that we have to go away and then we come back and we are all better. But now so many people are going on them that you kind of HAVE to see it, because we don’t have proper retreats set up. Which is mostly why I want to go to Grad School, so I can give you people your own desert so no one else has to hear your secrets when you learn who you are. And you won’t all be trans, just a few people are.

Privacy is an important thing, again, because people jump to hasty conclusions. And those conclusions limit people.

This really was an art project

I really did do an experiment of willingly putting myself under surveillance to see what would happen. I guess we know. And I guess it’s funny, because now if anyone actually did pay attention to me then they are reacting based on the process of coming to terms with transgender identity, because honestly, this is what it looks like. That was what my positive disintegration was about. And I’m glad I was under surveillance, although a lot of what I said is collective unconscious stuff or else just things I have heard that I felt obligated to report. Is any of it true? Really, honestly, I think you should go find out for yourselves. And you don’t have to go all those places man, you can just pick your own route of transformation, which is cool. I merely needed to reflect the world, but it’s not my world is it? Because this world doesn’t like transfolks. Or doesn’t understand them, which may be more why I decided to go under surveillance. But I am ready to let it go, I’m only going to talk about things I find useful now. And I have lots of fun things in my future.

But other people are also transforming in their own ways, and they have some cool things to talk about. And I think they should talk about them here, because I like hearing about all kinds of stuff, not just trans issues. Although clearly trans issues show up here.