dreams

I was recently driving around the UC Santa Cruz campus. It's a really striking campus, sitting high above the city/ocean/monterey bay, there's an expansive field with great views and then you enter a thick forest and the school is in little clusters of buildings connected by roads and trails. It is just powerfully peaceful and beautiful and I've never been on an campus that remotely resembles it.

Not only that, they have what I consider one of the best linguistics programs in the world (imo probably something like: ucsc, umd, mit, umass). this is largely the result of the efforts of sandy chung, jim mccloskey, jorge hankamer, etc. who developed a beautiful socratic style of teaching linguistics, syntax in particular. 

coming up in grad school, you internalize the idea that you don't get to choose where to live and that it's a roll of the dice to end up somewhere nice (or at least I internalized that). I never dreamed of ending up at a place like santa cruz, but then in 2016 I was a new trans woman living in iowa and was invited out there for a job talk after an interview at the lsa in DC. 

academic onsite interviews are pretty hellish, two days of nonstop talks, teaching, interviews, socializing. This was made extra hard cuz I had never done this before and I was new to presenting as a woman. I remember still feeling awkward and scared in the womens bathroom, a place that could have been a place of respite/sanctuary/refuge during something like this. The put me up in this dream hotel on the coast and I listened to the decemberists Oceanside on repeat, but was otherwise super stressed. I'd wake up at 2am due to jetlag and nerves.

I tried my best, but didn't get the job. who knows exactly why. But upon hearing the news back in iowa when sandy chung called me, I failed at concealing the fact that I was crying by the time we ended the call. My undreamt of dream life wasn't going to be. And soon enough my dream of even staying in linguistics was dead and I was back in my childhood home, unemployed and pretty much adrift.

***

I think this was a beautiful thing to have happen to me and I feel really lucky now that I didn't get that job.

I often think about what makes something brittle. sometimes it's a linguistic theory that is very brittle:  would be really easy to show that it doesn't work, and this is normally taken to be a good thing because at the end of the day we don't care if a theory works, theories are just disposable tools to aid in understanding. In organizing, we don't want things to be brittle, because organizations are hard to build and, for example, if your organization is totally dependent on one or a few people, it is really easy destroyed if those people move on for whatever reason.

Having your hopes and dreams crushed, at least in my experience with this case, makes the 'you' that persists through it very much not brittle. I know that I can survive and be happy even when my most cherished desires are made impossible. I think this is a really powerful and good thing. It frees me from the fear that I might be ruined, at least in terms of what I'm doing with my time all day, my life (this is capitalism, so it's work). It doesn't matter if I'm a linguist, or a barista, or unemployed. That's not where 'I' resides.

It makes me also think about people who have not gone through this sort of experience. Living in fear that one false step might destroy their conception of themselves or the perception of them in the eyes of others. Who knows, maybe that explains why careerists are so fucking dull and highstrung

hissing

there's a new of montreal album out and the song I've heard from it really draws into stark relief the span of time between now and when I was first listening to them. There's nothing particular to the lyrics or anything here that makes me think this. Rather, it's just the sort of wistful interludes here plus the fact that they're simply still chugging along. Here's the video

I started with satanic panic in the attic, but hissing fauna is the album that brings up the most for me. I was hanging out a lot with my friend Samantha at the time. She was sort of an it-girl in the seattle music scene for a second, dating some record label guy and we would hang out at sonic boom, go to shows together, and she loved this album.

This wasn't very edgy, it was on the safer, establishment side of things. She was in a sorority, was from fancy Issaquah and her family was from Liechtenstein. But it was fun being carefree and cool in this world for a bit, even if it was a little alien to me

youth

I often indulge in musings about mortality, but they're usually at worst pleasurable melancholy navelgazings about how we should cherish every moment and so on. But it's only when other emotional things in my life are heightened that mortality (or maybe more accurately aging) is made more visceral and intense and unpleasant.

I spent the last few days with a 20yo girl who I met in Iowa. She flew out to see me and I showed her around the town and we fucked a lot. She had never been to the west coast and hasn't had a load of experience with other girls. It was a pretty intense and jampacked few days. On our last day, we drove down the coast to Santa Cruz, watched the sunset into the ocean from a cliffside in a fantasm of blue and orange.

Maybe I'm projecting things onto her, but if I were her, it would have been a foundational experience for me. I had a number of similarly intense experiences when I was 19-21 and they are like my own personal lore, beautiful ragged-edged nights, precocious youths careening through the world agog at it all.

I was 19 in Vienna, hanging with the cool girls, the soundtrack that Spring was Placebo. We rolled up orange euros and snorted bright blue lines of adderall off a makeup mirror. Me and S walked the streets deep into the night exploring each others young lives and encountering new blisses.  At dawn we stumbled upon a soft white Maria am Gestade. We were at once jaded and vibrating, impressed with the world as our own creation.

But this weekend, I could intuit that a profound experience was happening, but it that meta distance rendered it sort of inert. I wasn't exploring, I was topping, in control. The asymmetry in ages might have had something to do with it, I dunno. The types of heightened experiences I once naively enjoyed might be unattainable for me now. I think I might be able to exhale after my surgery next month and maybe that will change things

oulu

I'm stuck on trying to write a spoonerism poem, which kept me from writing over the weekend.

In any case, I'm feeling wistful and nostalgic. This often happens to me and there are a lot of paths to it. A common one, which I traveled down today, involves me making a big life decision which in turn makes me worry and to calm myself I remind myself about how life and all this is just a dream. This wide scope extends backwards in time and memories pop up.

The particular memory I have now. I am 21, studying for the 2007 summer in oulu finland. Since it's summer the sun hardly sets and we stay out all night drinking and having fun. Near our apartments is a lake and at like 2am three of us go skinny dipping as the sky is orange and purple. It's me, Marina from Russia and Anna from Germany. I'm a straight guy, Marina is probably bi-ish, and Anna is gay. Me and Anna have been sorta jokingly competing for the affections of Marina and we're all drunkenly teasing and pulling at each other in the water. We knew what we were doing, all three of us would succeed in the end, but none of us knew that yet

sitting out

Navelgazing is fun and I do it all the time. probably like everyone else I'm constantly trying to assess and discern my place relative to everything else in the world, however hopeless a cause this might be since the world is so fantastically complex, my understanding is so limited, and things like 'myself' might not even be coherent. It's hard to attack this head-on, so I'll write about times when I've stuck-out, felt distinct from others etc. Not because these are unique, I'm sure everyone feels these things, but rather because they might be clarifying.

I went to a public elementary school. Each day, I would walk over to my friend's house and me and him and his sister would walk the 4 blocks to school. The school had a wide array of SES level kids and apparently some 'progressive' leadership because when I was in 4th grade (~10yo?) they decided to implement a policy where the students had to wear uniforms. This was, they said, a means to make the poor kids feel less bad about their clothes vis a vis the rich kids or something like that.

Whatever the rationale, I was dead set against it. I suspect now it might have had something to do with gender-related issues of mine, but I'm not sure. At the time I was very into contemporary alternative rock music. I remember a binder I had with a big pink heart sticker on it signaling my allegiance to the band Hole. I had a backpack with that jangled with the collection of random buttons I pinned to it. And I had a load of bright neon clothes and band tshirts from places like Zumiez and Trendy Wendy (womans club apparal store on capital hill in seattle). I was into the abject, I took pictures of trash and thought myself very gritty and arty. Needless to say, a uniform policy was not something I was interested in.

I got into arguments with other kids, older kids, parents about it and my own parents were very supportive of my whining. I remember people telling me that this was good preparation for the future and workplace dress codes. I remember touting my extra special fanciness and how I was pulled out of class to do big kid math and reading and stuff, so you don't need uniforms to be a good student. My brother, eager to fit in, was excited to wear a uniform, and we got written up in the paper about this. A lot of this is sort of cringe-inducing now, but it was a righteous crusade back then. I had one-on-one meetings with the principal and after a long ordeal, I was exempted from the policy. Everyone in the school had to wear uniforms, except me, I could continue to wear my silly costumes.

In high school 2001 happened when I was a sophomore and then 2002 happened and 2003. All the while I was reading lots of Chomsky, Angela Davis, adbusters, crimethinc, etc. I wrote my own little essays on how the colin powell shit at the UN was an obvious farce and my teachers were concerned and put off by it. I was a star student, athlete, etc. which made things maybe weirder. It's bullshit, but they let you gget away with more stuff if you're doing well by their metrics. In any case, I stopped standing for the pledge of allegiance and sneered at everyone else who did. I was threatened with punishment that never came.

Why am I like this? these are both individualistic meaningless ineffectual things, but also why isn't everyone else like this. I'm no more moral or smart or whatever than other people. Both of these things are basically passive refusals to do things, which imo is much less good than actually doing something. But why was no one else refusing? What does this mean?

mushrooms

I'm getting into newagey maybe hyberbolic supposed benefits of certain mushrooms in sort of an effort to overcome my lifelong phobia of them, and it actually seems to be working.

When I was a little kid, I wouldn't even touch a picture of a mushroom. Now I'm at the point where I can handle, wash, and chop those white button mushrooms. little by little

drinks

had drinks with a grad school friend last night and we talk about trans stuff as we often do. This person is pretty open about their so-called 'gender critical' views and it's interesting to interact with someone like this in person. a few tiny thoughts:

most people's opinions on most things just don't matter, and I think developing nuanced and detailed opinions in lieu of any action is just jacking off. I love jacking off and am not gonna begrudge anyone that. This person has some wrong opinions on trans stuff, but who gives a shit. Whether they see me as a woman is in part out of their hands and if they don't, well, given that they have no power whatsoever, sucks to be them. I don't believe in some sort of notion that society is shaped by any emergent properties of everyone's opinions. Some people's opinions affect me, most don't

maybe that's all the thoughts I have for now

lunchbreak

I'm at work, lunchbreak. In academia I longed for the stability and boredom of one of those office jobs, with watercooler gossip etc, and that's what I got! complete with cubicle. I don't care about what I work on and that's fine by me. I enjoy doing it and thinking about other things once I'm done for the day.

I imagine not being interested in what I spend my time on will catch up with me eventually. It probably is already leading me to want to write fiction or make some dilettante sound garbage with a musical instrument of some sort. So be it.

maybe I'll put some of that stuff here in the future

nose

walked to one of the myriad coffeeshops near me this morning, this one started in 1996 and is comfy and has a magazine rack which makes it seem anachronistic and I love it for that. It looks pretty certain that I'm gonna get facial surgery to demasculinize my face and I've been musing/dwelling on this a lot the last few days.

My face is basically fine, people say I look good, I pass easily, and I'm often satisfied with how I look. But this isn't enough apparently. I'm chasing after this image of femininity that will always recede the closer I get to it, which I don't think is so tragic, this is the same case with basically everything people strive for. Anything worth striving for is never truly achievable. probably. But that sounds dumb and aphoristic.

Another angle is the one where I'm the pampered pinnacle of white western tech treasure and I have nothing to do with the money beyond adorning my self-centered temple. Countless millions of trans women in the past and present would die to have my current position, let alone the chance to have their face fancied up by a top surgeon in the world.

Another angle is one I'm more sympathetic to. Another sort of practice death, just like my male body and name were always ephemeral but I got to experience their passing away, so too again with my face. This probably ties in with the above in the some California ideology hippie tech bullshit way, but so be it, I find that stuff appealing.

In any case, I saw a woman at the coffeeshop who had a notable nose and thought she looked beautiful and I imagine a series of vignettes, her as a girl self conscious and self hating, her as a young woman self conscious and self hating. and it made me wonder about my motivations.

everything2

This site's url is an allusion to a site that once dominated my world everything2. It's the nonneoliberal nonsterile version of wikipedia (it has facts, but also poems and dreams) and reminds me of a certain (type of) person in my life. It makes me think of the era where people would get boyfriends or girlsfriends long distance through MUDs or something. That stuff kinda repels me, but I've been adjacent to it a lot and I love other stuff that goes with it: I'm thinking late 90s alternative stuff, nick cave, manic street preachers, portishead.

pool

I used to rack up the balls and break each time, but now I just scatter them and have at it. I down all the stripes or solids and then go after the rest and play at least one game a day. If a security guard is around, I'll ask them to play with me

here's my terrence malick shadow shot

adornment

I'm generally pro-adornment, especially in writing, especially in spelling. Writing is just fun squiggles that are silly on their own (look at g lol) so why not more squiggles. The soberminded bores always toss in the caveat 'as long as it doesn't impede understanding' or whatever. but fuck that. that's dumb. Lots of things go ununderstood and it's fine, chill out

polish

Maybe it's a form of depression, but I find no appeal in the idea that I might do anything (like writing here) to get better at it, to hone it as a skill. I just want to have fun and relax. I don't want to be too clever or cute in my thinking. I also don't want to be too rigorous and clear, my thoughts are sloppy and bleed into each other, who cares. Writing is like some weird crystalline growth with odd angles jutting at each other all rigid and orderly, but it's just a kidney stone. This site will just set some of mine out in an array for you

typing

This page is half intended as a way to ween myself off twitter for good and half intended as a way to blather and muck around. I think I'm gonna try to keep it pretty twitter-like with short entries, jokes, and stuff like that