Five words meme
I never do lj meme things, but I am also lying about that.
baniszew Gave me five words to explain what they meant to me. Feel free to ask me for the same, if you feel like.
Purple, Juggling, Manray, Skirts, Interstitial.
Purple.
In the summer of 2002, I had no favorite color. I had had brief flirtings with cerulean in my elementary school years, but I was ready to dismiss the whole idea of a "favorite color" as something only kids did. At the same time, though, I was thinking about dying my hair. I was tired of the brown it had previously been, I wanted something more vibrant, something nice, and not naturally available. So I went through the colors in my head. Red? No, I can't even wear bright read, it doesn't go well with my skin color. Orange? Nah, that's even worse, and ditto yellow. Green or blue might work, but I was worried they would wash out my eyes, and fade to the ugly yellow-green that they so often do. Purple? That feels about right. It sets off the green in my color-shifting eyes, goes okay with my skin tone.. yeah, go with that one. A dark blue-purple, specifically. So dark it's almost black.
I liked it. Soon, nobody I regularly interacted with could easily imagine me with any other color hair. I would show people my student ID, with the picture taken when I had short brown hair and in general looked disturbingly guyish, and they'd be surprised that it was even a picture of the same person. The purple began to take over my wardrobe, along with black and dark green and blue, because I had to stop wearing any earth tones, which would clash with my hair. It seems I had a favorite color. Kind of snuck up on me.
Now it's my nickname. It's easy to tell people to call me Violet -- they need remember only the color of my hair, nothing more. And I don't need to worry as much about gender perceptions, either -- no matter what gender they're thinking I am, the fact that I deserve the nick is abundantly clear.
I'm stupidly vain about my hair. I like it long, pretty, and purple. Some day I may be done with the color and go on to something else, but for now, it stays.
Juggling.
I can't juggle. At least, not the way people tend to mean when they ask whether I can juggle -- the furthest I've ever gotten in toss juggling is twelve catches of three bean bags.
But I can juggle. Give me a single contact ball, and I know my stuff, if by "my stuff" you mean handwork, basic body rolls, isolations, and the ability to dance with the ball. I should practice more, but who shouldn't? Working on upper plane stuff, behind-the-neck rolls, more bodyroll control, and lots of other things only other contact jugglers care to know.
A sphere is one of the best ways I know to meet people. Stand and contact juggle in a place for a while, people will watch. Pull out some more spheres, offer to teach -- great opportunity for human connection. Both years I went to Burning Man, my favorite part of the whole experience was the days I spent in Center Camp teaching contact juggling. It's how I met mzrowan, even!
Manray.
Manray was this goth club that used to be in Central square, until it got bought and turned into condos. I miss it, though there are now enough other goth nights that I have no excuse for not going clubbing. I should go clubbing more!
... sadly, Manray wasn't really a good place to meet people. I never counted as a regular, and I only really ever talked to the people I went there with, or the people that I knew from some other walk of life anyway.
Skirts.
Back when my high-order gender presentation bit was male, wearing skirts was a thing, I guess. They were one of the few gender things powerful enough to say "no really, my gender is not male", at least sometimes (dammit, that can be a *very* hard message to send), and without being all crazy sexualized. I mean, they're sexualized by culture to some extent, but not as much as high heels or anything (and high heels just completely lose for practicality). So especially before I figured out more subtle ways of indicating that my gender was not male, I wore skirts, for parties, clubbing, or just around because I felt like it.
Back then, though my body was pretty clearly testosterone-dominant and not estrogen-dominant, I tried to make a point of whatever I was wearing not being cross-anything. They're my clothes. Of course they fit my gender! (it took me a while to figure out how to do this).
Story from high school: Probably my senior year, I was in electronics class, just working on my thing. An hour or so into the period (we did block scheduling), M., at the bench next to me for the whole time, turns to me and says "$NAME, are you wearing a skirt?" "Yep" "Oh."
And that was that, the most flack I got for it in school. Yeah, my high school was right for me.
Now, wearing a skirt is not quite so complicated. It no longer requires the special energy needed to deal with the random messes of stares I got, or confers the special energy I get by having to be so alert like that. Because, well, I get some amount of those stares no matter what, now. Whatever I choose to wear just changes them around slightly.
I mostly don't mind.
Skirts are pretty, but they tend to have few or no pockets. Such is life.
Interstitial.
Between things.
Between walls. Back when I was an underclassperson at college, I used to go roof and tunnel hacking a lot. My favorite activity in that was shafting -- finding the utility shafts in a building, the ones where all the pipes run up several stories, and climbing up or down them. It's a whole lot of fun, if you don't mind dust, fiberglass, late nights, and doing things by flashlight.
Between genders. While I really like having the high-order bit on my gender flipped to F, I am not sure I'll ever fit, or let myself fit, fully in the binary system of gender. It's too complicated for that in me. I'm not hugely butch, though I do describe myself as a tomboy. I'm not particularly femme, even though I do like some aspects of that presentation. I'm just me, existing the best I can. Liminal, in a way that is both specific to right now, with the various change going on in my body, and not specific to right now, in the sense of a gender identity that will probably always be trying to live in the interstitial space around the more well-known genders.
baniszew Gave me five words to explain what they meant to me. Feel free to ask me for the same, if you feel like.
Purple, Juggling, Manray, Skirts, Interstitial.
Purple.
In the summer of 2002, I had no favorite color. I had had brief flirtings with cerulean in my elementary school years, but I was ready to dismiss the whole idea of a "favorite color" as something only kids did. At the same time, though, I was thinking about dying my hair. I was tired of the brown it had previously been, I wanted something more vibrant, something nice, and not naturally available. So I went through the colors in my head. Red? No, I can't even wear bright read, it doesn't go well with my skin color. Orange? Nah, that's even worse, and ditto yellow. Green or blue might work, but I was worried they would wash out my eyes, and fade to the ugly yellow-green that they so often do. Purple? That feels about right. It sets off the green in my color-shifting eyes, goes okay with my skin tone.. yeah, go with that one. A dark blue-purple, specifically. So dark it's almost black.
I liked it. Soon, nobody I regularly interacted with could easily imagine me with any other color hair. I would show people my student ID, with the picture taken when I had short brown hair and in general looked disturbingly guyish, and they'd be surprised that it was even a picture of the same person. The purple began to take over my wardrobe, along with black and dark green and blue, because I had to stop wearing any earth tones, which would clash with my hair. It seems I had a favorite color. Kind of snuck up on me.
Now it's my nickname. It's easy to tell people to call me Violet -- they need remember only the color of my hair, nothing more. And I don't need to worry as much about gender perceptions, either -- no matter what gender they're thinking I am, the fact that I deserve the nick is abundantly clear.
I'm stupidly vain about my hair. I like it long, pretty, and purple. Some day I may be done with the color and go on to something else, but for now, it stays.
Juggling.
I can't juggle. At least, not the way people tend to mean when they ask whether I can juggle -- the furthest I've ever gotten in toss juggling is twelve catches of three bean bags.
But I can juggle. Give me a single contact ball, and I know my stuff, if by "my stuff" you mean handwork, basic body rolls, isolations, and the ability to dance with the ball. I should practice more, but who shouldn't? Working on upper plane stuff, behind-the-neck rolls, more bodyroll control, and lots of other things only other contact jugglers care to know.
A sphere is one of the best ways I know to meet people. Stand and contact juggle in a place for a while, people will watch. Pull out some more spheres, offer to teach -- great opportunity for human connection. Both years I went to Burning Man, my favorite part of the whole experience was the days I spent in Center Camp teaching contact juggling. It's how I met mzrowan, even!
Manray.
Manray was this goth club that used to be in Central square, until it got bought and turned into condos. I miss it, though there are now enough other goth nights that I have no excuse for not going clubbing. I should go clubbing more!
... sadly, Manray wasn't really a good place to meet people. I never counted as a regular, and I only really ever talked to the people I went there with, or the people that I knew from some other walk of life anyway.
Skirts.
Back when my high-order gender presentation bit was male, wearing skirts was a thing, I guess. They were one of the few gender things powerful enough to say "no really, my gender is not male", at least sometimes (dammit, that can be a *very* hard message to send), and without being all crazy sexualized. I mean, they're sexualized by culture to some extent, but not as much as high heels or anything (and high heels just completely lose for practicality). So especially before I figured out more subtle ways of indicating that my gender was not male, I wore skirts, for parties, clubbing, or just around because I felt like it.
Back then, though my body was pretty clearly testosterone-dominant and not estrogen-dominant, I tried to make a point of whatever I was wearing not being cross-anything. They're my clothes. Of course they fit my gender! (it took me a while to figure out how to do this).
Story from high school: Probably my senior year, I was in electronics class, just working on my thing. An hour or so into the period (we did block scheduling), M., at the bench next to me for the whole time, turns to me and says "$NAME, are you wearing a skirt?" "Yep" "Oh."
And that was that, the most flack I got for it in school. Yeah, my high school was right for me.
Now, wearing a skirt is not quite so complicated. It no longer requires the special energy needed to deal with the random messes of stares I got, or confers the special energy I get by having to be so alert like that. Because, well, I get some amount of those stares no matter what, now. Whatever I choose to wear just changes them around slightly.
I mostly don't mind.
Skirts are pretty, but they tend to have few or no pockets. Such is life.
Interstitial.
Between things.
Between walls. Back when I was an underclassperson at college, I used to go roof and tunnel hacking a lot. My favorite activity in that was shafting -- finding the utility shafts in a building, the ones where all the pipes run up several stories, and climbing up or down them. It's a whole lot of fun, if you don't mind dust, fiberglass, late nights, and doing things by flashlight.
Between genders. While I really like having the high-order bit on my gender flipped to F, I am not sure I'll ever fit, or let myself fit, fully in the binary system of gender. It's too complicated for that in me. I'm not hugely butch, though I do describe myself as a tomboy. I'm not particularly femme, even though I do like some aspects of that presentation. I'm just me, existing the best I can. Liminal, in a way that is both specific to right now, with the various change going on in my body, and not specific to right now, in the sense of a gender identity that will probably always be trying to live in the interstitial space around the more well-known genders.