On Thursday, instead of celebrating with family and friends, many people recognized a Day of Mourning. This is not new. The generations of genocide is not new to those who’ve suffered, are currently suffering, or are tuned into the suffering others are experiencing (often by the hands of their own ancestors). I am in the lattermost category, as a great grandchild of immigrants from countries like Italy, Lithuania, and Greece. One of my grandfathers did not hail from any of these places, and instead used to take pride in having family that was on the first ship to this so-called country. Read more...

There’s nothing more harrowing to me than being asked “why” when I’m asking someone to restructure a relationship. It’s immediately personal, deeply painful, and at some level, an inquisition. And it’s not the tongue-in-cheek inquisition in Monty Python. It’s not arguing about how dead the parrot is, either. Because, often, I find that I don’t know the parrot is dead until it stops squawking to be fed. The parrot in this case is my sexuality and my connection to romance. Read more...

I’ve had two people reach out to me in the last month about posts they’ve read on my blog. It’s been heartening to know that there are folks out there who are engaging with the material, and it also is motivating me to be more intentional when I post. Usually what goes here are unformed thoughts and ideas that I send out without much editing - and often don’t return to what I write. Read more...

How can we continue like this - vaulting over increasingly larger cracks, now too large to merely step around? Will we need to rappel down one side, climb up the other, before more people feel moved to do anything? Or will massive swaths of bodies need to fall through these cracks, will the chasms need to become bottomless? Someone responded to a Mastodon post I wrote about disaster thoughts that thinking like this gets them caught in a loop. Read more...

My mind spills off of rest like oil jumping from a hot pan. When I think about napping or stopping so-called productive tasks in the name of more relaxing activities, I am instinctively re-routed to something I “have” to do. Even if it’s empty or busy, I somehow would rather do it than, say, reading or drawing - even going on a bike ride in my neighborhood. Basically anything I find pleasurable is off the table. Read more...

I’m currently reading Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. What I was prepared to read was a meditation about the connection we have with marine mammals and how that translates to Black feminism. What I was unprepared for was a revelation regarding the functionality of online spaces. Gumbs writes: “How does echolocation…change our understandings of ‘vision’ and visionary action? Is social media already a technology of bounce, of throwing something out there and seeing what comes back? Read more...

I promised myself that this week would be an art week. My goal was to do weekly themes for my hobbies to prevent myself from chaotically starting and not finishing different projects. However, the Vergennes high school in Vermont has decided to host Walt Heyer in their auditorium next week, so writing week is starting a little early. Who is Walt? He gets his claim-to-fame for spending eight years as a trans woman and “regretting it. Read more...

It’s been hard for me to journal lately. I find that my internal narrator is reflecting silently these days, whether due to high stress or because my body chemistry is changing. Whatever the reason, I am attempting to go against that silence and tease out some of my own thoughts without its help. I celebrated the Seder for the first time two weeks ago, tapping into a merriment that I hadn’t experienced in a while. Read more...

A meditation brought on by mushrooms and a veteran Navy diver I recently found myself isolating at an empty apartment in the south end of Burlington. The isolation was both for practical purposes and for that deep, almost-spiritual need I get to be shrouded in silence. In a way, I guess those reasons could be one and the same: after some time, I cease to function like a human being without being given the chance to pray at the altar of solitude. Read more...

It’s hard to put a question mark at the end of that sentence. It feels more like a statement, a permanent form of being. Often, I find myself actively avoiding the news - and the computer in general - in order to distance myself from the slow burn of everything falling apart. However, it has a way of crawling up into every orifice of your existence to remind you that it’s there, that smell of decay we may love in autumn but not when it carries the hint of what’s to come. Read more...