inaugural thoughts way too early
Today is the Inauguration of the first black president of the United States. I feel like a transwoman Forest Gump sometimes. I am old enough to remember the moon shots from NASA, and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. I think in a box somewhere, in the few memory based possessions i… possess, there are newspaper articles from that first moonwalk, that either I cut out, or my mom did at my request. And oddly, they’ve made it here to Dallas TX on the day of the other greatest historic event of my life, the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Last year’s winner of the National Book Award was Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country. A retelling of his Edgar A/J Watson legend, taking place mainly in the Florida Everglades from the 1870s through the end of the first World War, blacks play a large role in this work. The work is like an arc, or rainbow of American History, and I feel lucky to have found this book, and finished it before today. If by some miracle of cryonics and good behavior, Mr Edgar A/J Watson were alive today, I think he’d be up at dawn, and after a survey of his plantations in South Florida, and a quick look at his portfolio online, this so-called mass murderer and so-called racist, would turn on his satellite feed, and watch what’s going to happen in about four hours, a tear of joy in his eye.
I think it is important to remember President Abraham Lincoln on this day, and Dr Martin Luther King. But I also think its important to remember the time in this country’s history that is my largest American fascination: Post Civil War to Post First World War.
So much occurred, and not only was it a sheer immensity of volume… It occurred in a fashion that worked in a collective, finding itself overwhelmed by individual perspective, much as the OED was at the time of its inception, and now, in our disposable era, as Wikipedia on a day to day basis is remade.
(Remember, resistence to the Borg is futile.)
Part of me wants to take this day off, and not deal with daily stuff. But another part of me wants to be around people today. Yes, even hermit girl me. This is huge.
I got to witness this century’s earliest national tragedies too, even partake in the latter, when I say 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Participate? Shoot. I was as in the middle of things as my life would provide me that opportunity.
And, no. I don’t think my transgender queerness was even a spec of an iota of the cause of the Storm. I was there cuz I chose to be. After nearly 3 years, I’m ready to go back. Nature won against me every time, and like the Borg it will again.
My self is picked up, and my knees and elbows are dusted off, and my earrings are different and my scowl just tightly redefined as feminine and ironic, but I’m kinda proud of the scars I wear on the inside.
My parents, Hope and Gerald, as parents did 3 things right.
(My mom tried the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, keepa you mouth shut” thang on me, but she gave up after her first and to my perspective only, reality check ever: that she wasn’t any good at that, too.)
1) They taught me a work ethic. You work. The end.
2) Try new things. (this led me to, I think, cooking food. And attempting to write poetry.)
3) They taught me to not trust. That was a long term lesson that finally took hold
After my dad died. It led to decades of mistrust and missed opportunities. Its why I cook.
Its also why I decided to transition my gender from assigned male to assigned female.
And now, Mr President Obama, I’m not counting on you to help me one bit.
Trust me, you don’t need to think about me to get the job done. Sheeyit. I voted for ya!
I am counting on you to make sure that you realize that, no matter how much Lincoln, or Dr King, or Mr X, or Ghandi (or even the X-(wo)men) worked their “bigger than me” shit?
They couldn’t work it if they were not alive in the positions they’d found themselves. I think, Mr Obama, that you know exactly where you are, and what you are, and I think that, if you watched some Star Trek NG in your earlier days, you know that the Starship Enterprise’s holodecks can afford you safe walks in the old neighborhood.
I think its funny that everyone is like, All, wow, we got a black president. When I’m all, wow, we got a president who’s not like the others.
And this is my biggest hugest thing! This is what makes The Man the Dude important. He’s the Man! And he’s the Dude! And he’s not like the others.
Remember, no matter where you were, and where you were, some aspect of your early upbring years led you to believe that you could be anything you set your mind to?
In my case it was to be a Dr and a Lawyer, and President of the United States.
As fucked up as my memory is, I remember chunks of this clear as yesterday.
(clear sky, mid sixties, in Dallas, yesterday.)
It’s taken Barack Obama his whole life to get where he is. Its taken you and me that long to get where we are.
In the best of times, I think that anyone who feels this, will smile.
No, I knew early on that I wouldn’t be President of the United States. When I was six (1968 or 9) I knew I cried too much for a boy. When I was seven I knew I’d never get a cub scout merit badge my mom didn’t fix the odds for, in advance. When I was 8 I shot a bird in the head with a bb gun and it lived, and my friend’s mom who was the firsr divorcee I’d ever met but was SO not hot, (Mrs Bramble, I believe her first name was Belinda, not by marriage, and this was before MRS became merrrzzzz in the awkward between space towards Ms) made Markie an me keep this bird alive. I don’t recall my parents knowing anything about this episode at all. Hmm
We kept the bird alive for six days. It was much in the same state my Dad, who’d die in his own home, across the street from the Brambles (they’d split and left long ago) some 30 years later. It stood like taxidermy on a perch in a cage.
Then it died. We did the movie thing, put the thing in a shoebox, dig a hole in the back yard. Utter what we could muster as and consider poignant words.
A day later, after at ages five and six, me for once being the older, I reported back to Markie my discovery of an ancient soul-cleansing burial technique called cremation.
Markie’s mom had got meaner and meaner. She was the neighborhood’s first working single mom (about 1971). I remember about that time being in the grocery store, Ralph’s, with my mom, and she was wearing a fur coat. I’d like to say it was the summer, and that this behavior was heavy enough for satire, but that’s just how I hate her. And she got spit on by a Taft High student (across Winnetka from the Ralphs, and where I would go to high school) for wearing fur. I remember that in those days, it was perfectly common to have one’s hair stylist in the same early and convenient version of the strip mall that was anchored by the Ralphs, and that about five years prior, I’d been in a carrier of the time, sitting surrounded by overweight curler women who doted on me with huge hot domes on their head, and played with the aliveness of my hair.
Somewhere in there, at the Ralphs, sitting in the buggy seat, a stranger commented on the lovely hair of my mom’s daughter, and my mom made a scene, inserting into the general public my gender male status and assignment.
But enough about me. Laughs.
I have hope that Obama, who is just under 2 years older than me, will help this country. Helping myself is my deal, not his. But I think he will, of a similar age and much more guarded, but probably in many ways similar experience, do things I can get a grip on, and climb up the rungs towards safety through.
Finally, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, We the People have a president that is not a middle aged white male. He is a soon to be middle aged black man. The possibilities are endless.
And today, in a few hours, when he gets sworn into his office of position of responsibility, no matter what happens, the end is no longer determined.
Think about that.
The end. Is NO LONGER. Determined.
If a black man can be elected president, then down the road so might a woman.
Persons of Latino or Asian heritage. This, finally, 234 years after we declared ourselves independent, is what I believe our founding fathers had, knowing times and things would change and that history would rush boldly forward, is what was written about when they wrote the declaration. This is what they wished for, y’all: At the least a very resolved sense of Jeez, let y’all sort it out, you’re killin me!
It’s no wonder we Americans are fat and lazy. In our minds, we always deserve a break.
So, lets get ready for today’s wake up call:
Lazy is no longer gonna be acceptable. Fat drunk and stupid is once again, like a curse lifted off one movie by another, a movie line, and not a way of life.
The soporizing responses to fear that have been for the last 8 years employed, have expired. And even the hottest pharm lab in the world won’t touch the Huxley Soma tab anymore.
Wake up!
This is the dawning of a new era. This is the time when the weak and selfish that have, for the past 8 years been fed and nurtured and given sensitivity training, will make the boldest of their moves.
Be kind, and smile, and say to yourself, I’m kinky and you’re not. Poor you. Giggle.
The queers, the kinks, the trans, the bi racial. The anything from the mainstream. The mainstream, deserter to that old war hero with the arms didn’t work and the chick from Canada or Russia farmland… I don’t remember their names.
Be kind when you rewind.
Its time now for not just the rich white guys to “get along”. Its time now for the rest of us to take only only and less than just as much as we need when we do, and give back ten times as much as we took in proactive vision. This is JFK time, man, ask not what, etc.
This is the greatest day in the history of the United States of America. I have to be at work at noon, business as usual.
Say that again:
This is the greatest day in the history of the United States of America.
Today, the Declaration of Independence rings true.
We made it. Finally, every last one of us.
[copyright TThInc, 1-20-2009]
Fuckin A.
Last year’s winner of the National Book Award was Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country. A retelling of his Edgar A/J Watson legend, taking place mainly in the Florida Everglades from the 1870s through the end of the first World War, blacks play a large role in this work. The work is like an arc, or rainbow of American History, and I feel lucky to have found this book, and finished it before today. If by some miracle of cryonics and good behavior, Mr Edgar A/J Watson were alive today, I think he’d be up at dawn, and after a survey of his plantations in South Florida, and a quick look at his portfolio online, this so-called mass murderer and so-called racist, would turn on his satellite feed, and watch what’s going to happen in about four hours, a tear of joy in his eye.
I think it is important to remember President Abraham Lincoln on this day, and Dr Martin Luther King. But I also think its important to remember the time in this country’s history that is my largest American fascination: Post Civil War to Post First World War.
So much occurred, and not only was it a sheer immensity of volume… It occurred in a fashion that worked in a collective, finding itself overwhelmed by individual perspective, much as the OED was at the time of its inception, and now, in our disposable era, as Wikipedia on a day to day basis is remade.
(Remember, resistence to the Borg is futile.)
Part of me wants to take this day off, and not deal with daily stuff. But another part of me wants to be around people today. Yes, even hermit girl me. This is huge.
I got to witness this century’s earliest national tragedies too, even partake in the latter, when I say 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Participate? Shoot. I was as in the middle of things as my life would provide me that opportunity.
And, no. I don’t think my transgender queerness was even a spec of an iota of the cause of the Storm. I was there cuz I chose to be. After nearly 3 years, I’m ready to go back. Nature won against me every time, and like the Borg it will again.
My self is picked up, and my knees and elbows are dusted off, and my earrings are different and my scowl just tightly redefined as feminine and ironic, but I’m kinda proud of the scars I wear on the inside.
My parents, Hope and Gerald, as parents did 3 things right.
(My mom tried the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, keepa you mouth shut” thang on me, but she gave up after her first and to my perspective only, reality check ever: that she wasn’t any good at that, too.)
1) They taught me a work ethic. You work. The end.
2) Try new things. (this led me to, I think, cooking food. And attempting to write poetry.)
3) They taught me to not trust. That was a long term lesson that finally took hold
After my dad died. It led to decades of mistrust and missed opportunities. Its why I cook.
Its also why I decided to transition my gender from assigned male to assigned female.
And now, Mr President Obama, I’m not counting on you to help me one bit.
Trust me, you don’t need to think about me to get the job done. Sheeyit. I voted for ya!
I am counting on you to make sure that you realize that, no matter how much Lincoln, or Dr King, or Mr X, or Ghandi (or even the X-(wo)men) worked their “bigger than me” shit?
They couldn’t work it if they were not alive in the positions they’d found themselves. I think, Mr Obama, that you know exactly where you are, and what you are, and I think that, if you watched some Star Trek NG in your earlier days, you know that the Starship Enterprise’s holodecks can afford you safe walks in the old neighborhood.
I think its funny that everyone is like, All, wow, we got a black president. When I’m all, wow, we got a president who’s not like the others.
And this is my biggest hugest thing! This is what makes The Man the Dude important. He’s the Man! And he’s the Dude! And he’s not like the others.
Remember, no matter where you were, and where you were, some aspect of your early upbring years led you to believe that you could be anything you set your mind to?
In my case it was to be a Dr and a Lawyer, and President of the United States.
As fucked up as my memory is, I remember chunks of this clear as yesterday.
(clear sky, mid sixties, in Dallas, yesterday.)
It’s taken Barack Obama his whole life to get where he is. Its taken you and me that long to get where we are.
In the best of times, I think that anyone who feels this, will smile.
No, I knew early on that I wouldn’t be President of the United States. When I was six (1968 or 9) I knew I cried too much for a boy. When I was seven I knew I’d never get a cub scout merit badge my mom didn’t fix the odds for, in advance. When I was 8 I shot a bird in the head with a bb gun and it lived, and my friend’s mom who was the firsr divorcee I’d ever met but was SO not hot, (Mrs Bramble, I believe her first name was Belinda, not by marriage, and this was before MRS became merrrzzzz in the awkward between space towards Ms) made Markie an me keep this bird alive. I don’t recall my parents knowing anything about this episode at all. Hmm
We kept the bird alive for six days. It was much in the same state my Dad, who’d die in his own home, across the street from the Brambles (they’d split and left long ago) some 30 years later. It stood like taxidermy on a perch in a cage.
Then it died. We did the movie thing, put the thing in a shoebox, dig a hole in the back yard. Utter what we could muster as and consider poignant words.
A day later, after at ages five and six, me for once being the older, I reported back to Markie my discovery of an ancient soul-cleansing burial technique called cremation.
Markie’s mom had got meaner and meaner. She was the neighborhood’s first working single mom (about 1971). I remember about that time being in the grocery store, Ralph’s, with my mom, and she was wearing a fur coat. I’d like to say it was the summer, and that this behavior was heavy enough for satire, but that’s just how I hate her. And she got spit on by a Taft High student (across Winnetka from the Ralphs, and where I would go to high school) for wearing fur. I remember that in those days, it was perfectly common to have one’s hair stylist in the same early and convenient version of the strip mall that was anchored by the Ralphs, and that about five years prior, I’d been in a carrier of the time, sitting surrounded by overweight curler women who doted on me with huge hot domes on their head, and played with the aliveness of my hair.
Somewhere in there, at the Ralphs, sitting in the buggy seat, a stranger commented on the lovely hair of my mom’s daughter, and my mom made a scene, inserting into the general public my gender male status and assignment.
But enough about me. Laughs.
I have hope that Obama, who is just under 2 years older than me, will help this country. Helping myself is my deal, not his. But I think he will, of a similar age and much more guarded, but probably in many ways similar experience, do things I can get a grip on, and climb up the rungs towards safety through.
Finally, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, We the People have a president that is not a middle aged white male. He is a soon to be middle aged black man. The possibilities are endless.
And today, in a few hours, when he gets sworn into his office of position of responsibility, no matter what happens, the end is no longer determined.
Think about that.
The end. Is NO LONGER. Determined.
If a black man can be elected president, then down the road so might a woman.
Persons of Latino or Asian heritage. This, finally, 234 years after we declared ourselves independent, is what I believe our founding fathers had, knowing times and things would change and that history would rush boldly forward, is what was written about when they wrote the declaration. This is what they wished for, y’all: At the least a very resolved sense of Jeez, let y’all sort it out, you’re killin me!
It’s no wonder we Americans are fat and lazy. In our minds, we always deserve a break.
So, lets get ready for today’s wake up call:
Lazy is no longer gonna be acceptable. Fat drunk and stupid is once again, like a curse lifted off one movie by another, a movie line, and not a way of life.
The soporizing responses to fear that have been for the last 8 years employed, have expired. And even the hottest pharm lab in the world won’t touch the Huxley Soma tab anymore.
Wake up!
This is the dawning of a new era. This is the time when the weak and selfish that have, for the past 8 years been fed and nurtured and given sensitivity training, will make the boldest of their moves.
Be kind, and smile, and say to yourself, I’m kinky and you’re not. Poor you. Giggle.
The queers, the kinks, the trans, the bi racial. The anything from the mainstream. The mainstream, deserter to that old war hero with the arms didn’t work and the chick from Canada or Russia farmland… I don’t remember their names.
Be kind when you rewind.
Its time now for not just the rich white guys to “get along”. Its time now for the rest of us to take only only and less than just as much as we need when we do, and give back ten times as much as we took in proactive vision. This is JFK time, man, ask not what, etc.
This is the greatest day in the history of the United States of America. I have to be at work at noon, business as usual.
Say that again:
This is the greatest day in the history of the United States of America.
Today, the Declaration of Independence rings true.
We made it. Finally, every last one of us.
[copyright TThInc, 1-20-2009]
Fuckin A.