Sans Seraph

Tag: writing

  • Misanthropocene

    Misanthropocene

    As we find ourselves coming to the end of the year it’s usually a good idea to pause and reflect on the past and take a look toward the future. There isn’t a lot to do when you’re stuck inside, hiding from the deluge and wind, but sit around, staring at each other in the candle light, watching the shadows dance long down your lover’s face, hoping that when the calm finally returns, there will be something of the world left to salvage.

    The amount of apathy I have toward the world at the moment I feel is a decent reflection of the apathy that got us all here in the first place. Our planet is angry, and instead of responding to a changing world, and trying to either adapt, or prevent disaster, we as a species have decided it is better to fight each other, and ignore the bigger threats. How can we possible deal with our failing infrastructure and increasingly record breaking weather events when the boys are wearing dresses, the children are using litter boxes, and the elderly are intent on burning the world down around them just to stave off the cold of old age? We are gambling with the one thing there isn’t more of in this universe: time, which, as someone who doesn’t gamble at all, seems like a bad idea. What do I know though, I’m just some trans woman with an inner monologue and empathy.

    This year has been hell. Sure, there’s been a lot of good, but I’m sure that my fellow Americans will agree that the general feel in this country is that hope is fleeting. Prices are higher, jobs are disappearing, and even those that “voted for this” are beginning to see just how wrong they were. To put it simply, we done fucked up. How can anyone do anything but look to their own survival in times like this? When you can’t eat, or get your meds, and every day you’re told that society is collapsing around you, how are you supposed to put up a fight?

    This time of year there are always a lot of posts like this, and videos talking about the year, but the most pervasive ones I’ve been seeing have contained a message that circles around this: if all you did this year is survive, then that’s good enough, and, sure, that’s valid, even in good times there are some of us struggling, but these aren’t good times, and if we are already, as a civilization, knocking on the doors of survival, at the hands of our own duly elected leaders, then how do we expect to survive when the actual doom comes? We sit on the face of this planet (giggity) and proclaim ourselves masters over nature, but some bronzed pedophile and his Gatsbian court of ghouls has brought us to our knees. We are victims of a terrible intelligence, but that pales in comparison to the one thing we are all victims of, physics, and if we cannot survive a baboon, then I shudder to even begin to imagine the untold suffering that we are about to witness in the next century.

    The dams and levees are breaking, crops are failing, every summer is hotter, every winter colder. If these warning signs are ignored, then when the real shit comes, when mother nature tenses and begins to shrug us off the surface of the earth to save herself, then it won’t matter that the bible isn’t taught in schools, or that the girls are kissing each other, or that a Puerto Rican is doing the halftime show. There will be death, not noble, not bright, but total, brutal, in the way that only a cruel and uncaring universe can mete out.

    My hope is that this past year has taught some of us that it is easier to leave others alone than to try to control them. Above all, as long as whatever someone is doing isn’t hurting others, then they should be allowed to do it. We spend far too much time caring about the actions of others, and not enough working on ourselves and trying to better the collective. At this critical point in our history as a species, if we do anything that does not contribute to the greater good, it should be considered a moral crime. Take care of yourself, take care of your neighbor, and take care of your planet. One day, even if we turn our shit around, we will need to find a new home, and we cannot gain the knowledge and build the technology we need to do that if we are constantly bickering with each other.

    So stop it. Live your life, let others live theirs, stop giving so much of a shit about the things you don’t like. It’s selfish. We are selfish, and it’ll be our downfall. If you care about yourself, your children, your friends and family, then you have to also care about the rest of us. There is no more distinction. Never before has the line “the only thing required of the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” been more poignant. So if all you did this year was survive, then in the next you should riot. Tear down the enemies of mankind that have made you only able to survive. We are running out of time.

  • Where the waters do not curve

    Where the waters do not curve

    One year ago today I went on a date with an amazing girl at a Mexican restaurant on Alki Beach. We were both shy and awkward. She forgot her ID and so neither of us had a margarita, which was fine, because she doesn’t really drink. We went for a walk on the beach. It was very cold, though I was much colder than she was. We decided to sit in my car with the heater running, and talked for hours. I stayed up past my bedtime.

    This morning I woke up next to her, the same as I have for many mornings now. Of course my first lesbian relationship would be one in which I very quickly U-Hauled. I had a Halloween party the weekend after our first date. The night before was the first time she slept over, and she helped me set up for it, but didn’t attend. I was too scared of things moving too fast. That night, at the party, I kept bringing her up, and was summarily met with questions such as “well, why isn’t she here?” I was scared. I didn’t want to rush, but I hadn’t quite grasped that I was caught up in a wave of feelings that I could not control, and day visits became nights, became weeks, became months, and now, I’ve spent a year with her.

    I love her so damn much. I’ve never felt so understood by someone, or let myself be so open. I don’t know where I’d be now, I don’t know how I’d have gotten through the last year, as rotten as it has been, without her next to me. She has let me radiate all of my chaos into her life, and stood by quiet and composed and ready to help me put myself back together. Similarly, she’s harnessed my stubbornness and unyielding march toward progress to her own benefit. We work very well together.

    I have some pretty major trust issues, mostly stemming from my upbringing. Until recently, I’ve seen my life as some great cauldron, run through with cracks, and filled to the brim. The water leaks out, and I am furiously applying clay to patch the holes, failing to see that the cracks are getting smaller, and the flow of love into the vessel out weighs the flow out.

    I’m very lucky. I have an wonderful partner. I have amazing friends. I have been in amazing relationships in the past, and they are now very dear and wonderful friends. I suppose that is what healing is, at least for me. If I am a coiled spring, cold and tense, then the love that has been brought into my life by accepting myself, and welcoming the acceptance of others, is the heat of the torch that is straightening that spring. Slowly I’m starting to unwind. I’m starting to forget that I was ever coiled, holding up the weight of the world. I can’t begin to thank all of the people that have helped me along the way.

    Ram Dass says that “we’re all just walked each other home.” We all remember trauma. We all enter into this world formless, and have others beat us and shape us on the anvil of adolescence. The world looks at us with a cold eye, and says that we must do this, and say this, and think that, but love eventually returns us to that immutable shape. We are not the sum of our experiences, quenched in oil and set rigid in the sky. We are the same lump of clay we always were. Sometimes we’re a pitcher, or a plate, or some horrific sculpture born from the mind of a narcissist, but never fired, never set.

    The hands of love reach down to us and smooth our edges. They push and prod and make us into something new, something better, and then remake us all over again. It’s up to us to accept the change, and the help, and realize that nothing is wrong with us, and that the only thing you’re doing wrong is standing still.

  • Friends in ‘booch places

    Friends in ‘booch places

    Last night, whilst traipsing around Capitol Hill with my friend, posting flyers for my other friend’s meme coin, I visited a kombucha shop that was entirely unmanned (which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.)

    You walked up to the locked door, scanned the code, created an account, and let it know you were there. The door unlocked and you walked inside. There was a multitude of different kombuchas on tap, as well as a few little sitting areas, a restroom, some swag, a little red light therapy trial box; the whole thing was very modern and kitsch, but the really amazing part, was that there were no employees. Now, there were an inordinate amount of cameras, so surely someone was watching to make sure we didn’t make a mess, or steal anything, but it was surreal. My friend poured a medium ‘booch out of the tap, paid on the app, we used the bathroom, visited the downstairs yoga lounge, then were on our way.

    The really interesting part is how seamless it all was. At the time we visited, there was no one else in the shop, so I had to imagine that if it had been staffed by a human, that person would have been bored to tears, busying themselves with menial tasks, or truly doing nothing and idly doom-scrolling. My initial reaction to this was “wow, someone could have been paid to be here, but instead the whole job is done, essentially, by a robot,” which then made me realize no one needs to do this job.

    The fact that I even had that thought tells you how infectious and pervasive our participation in capitalism is. Sure, the company that runs that shop could have paid someone minimum wage to be bored to death working there, or, they can make it completely self service. Not only does it make sense from a business perspective, as labor is always a huge part of overhead, but when you view this from the lens not of “they’re taking our jobs” but from “they’re freeing us from labor” you see how great of an idea it is.

    With the rise of AI and how much that technology is being leverage in creative spaces, then it makes sense to be angry with technology. Creative pursuits are exactly what humans should be doing. Throughout time technological advances have led to more leisure time that has been followed by more creative endeavors. Technology should always be welcomed when it frees us from doing menial tasks. With the rise of agriculture, more humans could take up other occupations, and thus art, science, and a million other industries were created.

    Freeing labor is exactly what technology should be for, but when labor is free, and the people have time to themselves to think, to work together, to look around at the world rather than focus on survival, then the institutions that control that labor begin to feel their foundations quaking. Your boss, your government, and the corporations that they serve do not want you to be free. They do not want you to find a better way. If it were up to them, we would all still toil daily, hunting and gathering, while they tithe us for “safety and protection.”

    Marx himself wrote extensively on how advancements in technology would one day culminate in truly freeing the proletariat from all forms of grunt work. Even despite the push back, the slow march of progress continues on. We are seeing a time where the current clandestine “rulers of the world” are shaking in their nickers trying desperately to keep us in line. They force us to toil in the dust while they leverage inventions created because of the liberation of labor against us. They show us that our pursuits of art and literature, of leisure, can never compete with the efficiency of their machines, all while the fruits of our creativity command even higher respect despite it.

    Those who seek to control you fight a losing battle to history and the inexorable march of time. Progress will continue, and they have thrown in their lot with the losing side. They have artificially created tragedy just to maintain their control, but it will never work. Through all of the chaos in politics, and racism, and bigotry, and all of the rivers of blood and ruined cities and lives, we, the meek, the down-trodden, the great driving force of progress, will eventually be free of their machinations.

    If there can be fully autonomous kombucha bars in Seattle, and robots can build cars, and make food, and even a small group of people can then take the time to truly live rather than sweat, then those that seek to hold us in the dirt with a boot have already lost, and that, in a very small way, is giving me hope.

  • All the bones of summer

    Well, that’s it. The summer of 2025 is over. The bleak gray of the long dark has come once again to Seattle, and I sit here hoping in the deluge and freeze to come, that some of the rot and decay that has stuck fast to the ribs of this country will be washed clean. I hope that in winter’s blanket the world, and myself, will heal a bit, and be ready to face what spring will bring, and what will probably be another summer stolen.

    I recently returned from a work trip. Usually I abhor going on such excursions, but this time was a bit different. I am a bit different. I’m a bit better. Despite everything I feel the progress in my own soul advancing, even when the world outside me seems determined to crumble. For a week I holed up in my hotel room, and in the hours that I was not working, I took a break. Spending time online recently has been a source of extreme frustration and suffering, and I just couldn’t do it. After washing off the dirt of the day, I’d lay in my rented bed, watching cable (an anachronistic hobby at this point) and reading. In between page turns and early evening cartoons I had a lot of time to think.

    When I’m alone and not plugged in, I’m happy. When even for a minute I can ignore the tempest blowing through the hallowed halls of Washington, I can remember how I felt in the summer of ’24, when my whole life was ahead of me, and that’s the thing, it still is. I’m really starting to love the way I look, and how I feel, and I’m starting to gain an amazing confidence and surety in myself that I can’t believe I never had before. What I am doing, what I’m going through, this whole process of becoming, and of being true to myself, it’s working, which makes me wonder why are there people out there that think that standing in the way of that, when it affects them not at all, is a good idea?

    Completely ignoring the fact that most people actually don’t care about trans people, and most people also want to be left alone to live their lives, and that trans people are just another in a long line of marginalized populations used as scapegoats to further the agenda of organizations determined to impose their will and, more importantly, capitalism, why does anyone fall for it? Why do followers exist? Why do people look at me, who has found within herself all of the tools to heal and be healthy and is doing the work to make a difference in her own life, with such disgust? Surely it can’t just be the fault of propaganda?

    Why do others feel the need to impose their will on others? Why is everyone so convinced that their way is right, and that others are wrong, and that they can’t be happy until everyone thinks like them? I think there lies within the structure of power, of governance, an inherent evil. One that is ancient and must be routinely routed out, or else great pain is felt for entire generations. The playbook for this evil is known, and that knowledge is widespread, yet there exists some sticky-sweet honey that it possesses that allows the common man to fall prey to its charms and ignore all of the history, all of the rivers of blood, that it has left in its wake.

    It is the need of the few to control the many that gives rise to this evil. True freedom, for anyone, can never be felt as long as there is the will of another imposed on the will of the self. Small groups of people can work together, and I think everyone agrees that common goals and mutual aid are a great boon to society, yet we seem to all be fighting the same battle every century.

    If Siddhartha’s great battle was to free the soul from the infinite cycle of birth and rebirth, then the modern search for Nirvana should be to break the constant cycle of the few holding sway over the many. I do not know how much longer we as a species can do this dance before have no more floor on which to do so.

    Men who live in excess now go to their satin lined graves on the backs of generations of people who wanted nothing more to be free. They have sacrificed the future of billions of their fellows in order to make their temporary respite from oblivion marginally more comfortable. What else can you call that but evil?

    I want it all to make sense. I want to understand how anyone can look around at all of this, see what’s happening, and not rage against the time stolen from them. I want to know why evil prevails. I want to know why something using such archaic weapons is still so effective.

    I’m very curious how this will all play out. We always look back at things like genocides, or wars, or terrorist attacks, and say “never again,” but it always comes back. Millions of people, myself, included, have been pointing out the descent for years, and yet it all falls on deaf ears.

    The only hope I’m holding onto right now is that the current administration seems so farcical, and so inept, that I hope all of the atrocities I’m predicting don’t come to pass. I’ve been staying away from the news as well. That has truly been helping. I don’t feel so under fire when I get away from it all. I am doing great. When I focus on my little life, I am constantly in awe with how much better my minute world is now. Perhaps that’s the secret. Maybe where individualism went wrong was it stopped being about the individual. If you look to make yourself a person you’d actually like to be, you stop caring about how others are different. If you look to better yourself, then all of their primordial weapons will turn to ash, and finally blow away and find rest on the fields of history.

  • Carte blanche

    Carte blanche

    I don’t normally like to be so reactionary with my words as I’m about to be. I’m not a reactionary person. I prefer to observe, assess, plan, but I have some time to kill at the moment and the specter of fear is lording over me, so, here it comes out of the brain pipe, raw and unfiltered.

    I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the truth prevails, and that this incident with Kirk doesn’t become the call to arms for the right to start firing up the engines and building the camps. I hope that this incident was (as statistics show) just another pissed off cisgender, white, male.

    But it won’t be. The right has been looking for a martyr to catalyze their message for years. It didn’t work when Trump was shot, not how they wanted. They needed blood, and, after seeing the video, it looks like they got it.

    I pray to whatever force beyond me is listening that the shooter doesn’t turn out to be a trans person, but, as the truth does seem fluid these days, I’m sure no matter the outcome, we will be blamed. There is an agenda here, and this fits so nicely into furthering their narrative, that I really don’t see a way that they won’t try to twist this as a leftist-trans plot to kill “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.”

    Since January 2013, of the 5700 mass shootings in the US, 5 of the perpetrators have been confirmed to be transgender, according to Gun Violence Archive. A statistic that works out to 0.088%. That’s even less that the often reported 1% of the population being transgender. Yet, of late, every single horrific event is being tied by the right to a transgender person.

    If at any point there is a person in this country with even a modicum of free thought that thinks that trans people are not being singled out an othered to force an agenda of eradication and genocide, then you are the highest of fools.

    Here’s what is really happening. Law abiding trans people, such as my partner and I, and scared. Fear is not something I generally describe myself as having. Yet, in the middle of the night two days ago, as I awoke to my dog barking out the sliding glass door that walks directly into our bedroom, I was afraid. I am proudly, outwardly trans. We have trans pride flags hanging from our frontage. Yet in that moment, my partner mentioned how maybe we should take them down. I wondered at whether I should keep my pistol out of the safe and next to the bed. Trans people have now become hunted things.

    What had become the greatest gift I had ever given myself, to be truly happy, to feel joy and love for myself and my body, is being used as a political tool to further the cause of fascism. It happened before, and it is happening now. Every fascist regime needs a scapegoat, and trans people are it.

    In the same week as three prime ministers have resigned from office, as countries such as Nepal riot in the streets and demand better, America, so braggadociosly strong, rests on her laurels and lets her democracy erode. While the jews died, the Germans suffered, and it will be the same here.

    Though the world did not depend on Germany. Germany was at best a giant among men. The United States is, for better or worse, a cornerstone of our civilization, and the fact that the “greatest country in the world” is keen to sit back and let the rot of fascism eat her from inside, says a lot about how decadence and comfort are the enemies of growth.

    I’m afraid, and if you’re not, if you think yourself distant from the conflict, or even on the “winning side” then you should at least beware.

  • Up to speed

    I’ve recently returned from my tenth journey to Burning Man. Since I’ve been back I’ve been trying to think of how I’d write this article, something summarizing the changes I’ve seen in the event, the denizens, etc, but I find myself not having a lot to say, or, at least, I haven’t puzzled out quite what all of those thoughts I had in the Great Desert K-Hole meant.

    It was a hard burn. With the weather and a flurry of emotions in the beginning of the event, I found myself falling back into old habits. It is a lesson I’ve learned a few times now, but it is truly hard to disassociate who you were in certain places and certain events with who you are now, especially when those prior actions were, at best, coping mechanisms for a hollow life.

    It has become very apparent that my attitude and relationship toward the event needs to change, and I’ve decided to take at least next year off. I’ve been planning to do so for a while, but I’m going to follow through this time. Think of it less as a retirement, and more of a licking of the wounds and returning with vengeance.

    All of that being said, I had a great time with my absolutely wonderful campmates, and I greatly enjoyed showing my darling, patient girlfriend around my favorite place. I promise, beautiful, burn was better next year.

    I haven’t posted in a while, and that irks me. I really hope this gets me back into the habit of writing regularly. I need it. I think I can make something of it, if I can just maintain momentum. It is the thing I was always best at, afterall.

    This summer, nay, this past year, has been hard. It constantly astounds me how polarly opposite this summer and last were. Here is the part where I’d tell you about how my job has been kicking my ass, I seem to be incredibly emotional all of the time, I live with constant anxiety that my rights are being taken away, and I’m one dark alley away from being tossed through the gates of a modern Auschwitz.

    In fact I’d usually, at this point, start lamenting how my depression has returned after being basically eliminated by HRT. I’d talk about how every day I read the news and cry out into the void as only one who truly doesn’t understand what to do in the face of such reckless hate and idiocy can.

    I won’t. I won’t do it. I spent this morning crying and I won’t do so again. Not today. Not for that reason at least. I just cry all of the time now, so it’s bound to happen later. So let’s talk about what’s going right, and we might as well start with that.

    I cry all of the time! I have emotions! How wonderful (and no, that isn’t sarcasm!) Now that I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of exclamation points, let me just say, that being able to feel this deeply is one of the highlights of the past year. Sure, it makes the bad stuff really bad, but the good, dear reader, the soaring in my soul when I play with my dog, or eat something delicious, or feel hope, the good things I feel almost make up for the pall that has fallen over the world.

    On top of emotions, I look great. Modesty be damned, and I know that I have a long way to go, but I don’t hate looking at myself in the mirror every day now. Things are starting to match. Just earlier I noticed my silhouette, something that has always bothered me, and I didn’t have an instant aversion to it. I had a lot of dysphoria at Burning Man, but it was apparently unwarranted. I loved the pictures. I’m starting to feel confident in my body, and why anyone wants to take that away, I’ll never know.

    I took Jenny to her first pride, and she took me to see her camping spot, and, just, Jenny. She is so good to me, and so patient, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so understood by someone. How I have not annoyed her to death at this point, I’m not sure.

    I went to the ren faire with my friends for my birthday, and we had a great time. In fact, I have wonderful friends. I am really hard on myself, but these people let me hang around despite the despair and self-loathing.

    I’ve been writing. I think I’m actually starting to get back into the swing of it. Currently I’ve got two stories I’m sort of hashing out, as I’d like to start diving into fiction again. I think at this point it’s safe to assume I’ll always be far too anxious to make it as a reporter, and that’s okay.

    Things aren’t always going to go well. In fact, I’ve spent increasingly more amount time assuming that nothing will be good ever again. I’m still not sure I’m incorrect on that. There are dark clouds on the horizon. The overwhelming sense of agitation I feel on a daily basis just existing in this most broken of timelines is immense. I’m not going to think about that for the rest of today. I can’t. To do so pushes me farther into the realms of burn out, and I’m already circling the rim. There may be a time where my will finally breaks, but not for the rest of today.

    Fuck it all, and stay safe.

  • Rattling the keys

    Mine is a very anxious mind, and as such, I have a very hard time sitting still. You see, I like to solve problems. More than anything I’ve ever been able to do, that is what I do best. Even this blog is a means to try to solve the problems I have with the insane ramble that is always chattering and wailing inside my head. Living like this, while constantly feeling I must shift one way or another, in a futile attempt to “fix” something about myself, or my life, is an absolutely horrible way to live.

    I wrote the above after having a shower revelation. I spend so much of my life trying to pursue some sort of arbitrary level of perfection. The impatience and anxiety I embody wholly is immense. I am eternally, and existentially, exhausted. I seem to be constantly taught and reminded to breathe and take things easier, slower. So I am hoping that this small, daily reminder, posted next to my monitor, will be something that can ease some of this tension.

    My entire life there has felt like I have this spring inside me, that I just desperately want to let go. The only time I have been able to make any progress on that goal was when I started transition. That is perhaps the only time I have ever felt peace in my life, and, for a long time, it was good. However, I’ve noticed a curious pattern of late. If I could find an answer to the biggest question I ever had, if I could actually change things in my life, than surely I could solve everything, right? If I had the ability to start this monumental journey, it should be easy to roll the momentum over and finally reach the top of the mountain. I could untwist the spring inside of me until the coil was straight and true and rang pure into the void of my soul.

    So, without even realizing, I let my guard down. I took out the earplugs, and let the sinister voice of anxiety back in. That demon then immediately used its greatest weapon against me. My old nemesis had sat for nearly a year armed and ready to bring me down, and it did so with my greatest flaw.

    I’ve never been a patient person. I rush through things. Really, it goes hand in hand with my anxiety. If I have things I want to do, problems I want to solve, I feel compelled to do them, even if care and caution are warranted. The weight of the thing pushes on the spring and undoes whatever progress I have made. Thus, the only logical way to relieve the tension, is to immediately and completely do the thing.

    Sometimes this manifests as projects completed to a lesser grade than I would like, sometimes it manifests as crippling agitation when I can’t do them. I will spend a whole weekend worrying about something I have to do on Monday. If I can’t complete something in one day’s time, than I will ceaselessly grind down on it until it and I are dust.

    I decided I’ve spent too much of my life concerned for the future and lamenting the past. I gave myself an amazing gift, of finally, after more than three decades, of being my true self. I have goals, sure. I’d like to own my own house some day. I really need to get out of my dead end job and do something creative for work again. None of these goals are achievable overnight. I am doing the work. Hell, this blog is testament to that. In the mean time though, there is a whole lot of life I’m missing.

    This is all easier said than done, of course. Not only do I seem biologically prone to this constant worry, but we live in very worrying times. Ours is a world that tells us to constantly achieve, constantly grow and earn. If we don’t do that we’re left behind, or possibly cast out. Our lives are candle flames that are being used to heat an ever larger pot, and the cook cares not for any individual candle flame, only that more are produced when one burns out. Well I’m done caring about the pot. The only thing that matters are the lights within me and around me, because in the end, all that really matters is the warmth around us while our candle still burns.

    So if there is a spring, and if there is a constant, never ending supply of loads added to it, then it follows that I should not be concerned with the rate at which I am able to unload the spring, but rather with how much weight the spring can handle. There will always be time to remove loads and solve problems, and there are far worse things to be than a spring.

  • You are (not) free

    I was born to deeply religious, conservative parents in a deeply conservative part of the country. I was raised to believe in the supremacy of the United States, that we were on the right side of history, that we were “the good guys.” At some point in my life, I even wanted to join the military, to serve my country, and to participate in whatever way I could in the great American experiment.

    Today is the Fourth of July, a day that used to be my favorite holiday. Each year in rural Montana we would go into town to watch the parade and spend time at the local faire in the park. This small town was the epitome of life when “America was great.” This was the kind of life that people had in mind when the wave of conservative thought rot swept the country. A place where you knew your neighbor, where you lived in harmony with the land, and where the great Big Sky that the state of Montana is known for opened wide to greet you.

    It was a town with such accolades as “the place FDR visited once,” and one of the few places Max Brooks in his book World War Z said would survive the zombie hordes. A place where if you were white and male, you enjoyed the pinnacle of existence, as long as you had a job; at the mill, or the mine, or worked for the Forest Service.

    Well, the mill closed ages ago, and the mine is, well, a mine. Many forestry jobs were lost when the government gutted the Forest Service, selling out the land that some many people, who voted vehemently for this administration, love and cherish. The nearest hospital is the next town over, and will probably close with the recent cuts to healthcare. Most of the people in the town are aged, and will almost certainly now suffer a higher mortality rate due to lack of accessible healthcare.

    Corporate interests will move in on the newly purchased land. Maybe enough labor jobs in logging and resource gathering will spring up to keep what few young people remain interested as the trees on the mountains thin, and the fish die out. Maybe, finally, after the mountains are run through with shafts and tunnels, and the Earth herself tries to shake us off her skin like biting fleas, will the people realize what they have done.

    When I planned out this post, I had intended to write about how today, as we celebrate the independence of our country from tyranny, that I, a trans woman, am less free that I have ever been before. I, someone who at one point wanted to serve this country, who, for all intents and purposes, has done everything “right” in my life, am in a position where I am simply a political pawn for our corporate overlords. All of that is true, and, honestly, the working class hasn’t been free in this country since, well, ever. However my thoughts today return to my small hometown in northwestern Montana.

    The overwhelming majority of those that fell prey to the MAGA cult are people like my parents and former neighbors, who wanted so desperately to live out in the wilderness and enjoy the serenity of nature and the quite of only occasional social situations that they deliberately chose to live in what could be called economically and educationally depressed areas. It is the people in these places that will feel a sickness of the soul that will grind them down into weak things even as people like me are hunted and destroyed bodily.

    The passing of the Bulbous Bubo Betrayal has doomed the average American worker, both those that voted for this administration, and those that so viciously fought against it, to a fate worse than what potentially awaits me and other trans people. Though it has become clear that the ruling body of this country will stop at nothing until me and my ilk are rounded up and done away with, it is those that linger and will have to endure the epigenetic blight that will suffer the most. You see, I never thought I was free. I took up the mantle of womanhood knowing that I would have to fight for my rights, yet I did so willingly. It is those who are truly the most vulnerable, who were duped into thinking what they were doing was right, who believed the lie that they were not free who will suffer the most as their spirit decays.

    So today, it is as I prepare to celebrate not the birth of my country, but of my community, that I lament the fall of the noble redneck, hillbilly, and good ol’ boy. The farmer, the miner, and the rig worker. To all of those that have finally realized their betrayal, who now realize that the lines aren’t left and right, but us and them that I say “welcome to the party.” You were always allowed in. We love you, and it’s okay. Now, grab your torch and pitchfork, and let’s get to work.

  • The List: A gulf between us

    I have a Google Keep list of story ideas that I have been, well, keeping for years now. A whole series of little prompts for myself that I’ve said I would get to one day. Most of them I have come up with sporadically, some have even been dreams. Well, someday is today. At the behest of my lovely partner, I’m going to start working on The List. I’m going to try to make it a full story in around 2000 words, but let’s see how that goes.

    Anyway, let’s get started.

    Willow smiled. It was always so good to hear from Jen. They could be a literal galaxy away, and Jen’s messages, though growing more infrequent, always made her day. As the images of her latest project played across the screen, Willow couldn’t help but feel proud of her, and a little lonely. She showed her how far the colony’s farm project had come, and how the pressure had started to rise outside enough that she could walk without a suit.

    “It’s still very cold, but with my heated parka I can be out long enough to collect some samples of the flora. These plants feel so weird.” She said.

    The specimens in question were indeed strange. Though green like the plants here in the habitat, the texture of them was odd. Small little dendrites of material covered them, reminding Jen of the tongues of cats, though they seemed to be more willing to lay down when she moved her delicate fingers over them.

    “We’ve been able to get these particular ones to grow in our environment,” Jen said, holding up a desiccated brown twig with purple leaves to the camera, “which makes us hopeful that the local flora will be able to tolerate a higher oxygen environment. Still, we’re decades away from being able to walk outside without breathing equipment.”

    She panned the camera around her living area, showing Willow some other things she had collected, then finally pointed the camera to her face, pale and calm. She always looked so serene, even when she had sent her messages to Willow during the journey to the planet, when micrometeors had set her vessel adrift for three days.

    “I suppose I’ll go. I can’t wait to hear from you again. I wish you could see this place. I wish I could see you.”

    She moved her hair out of her eyes and stared down the barrel of the lens. There was such depth there, a deep blue with a ring of brown fire around the pupil. She let a half smile crest her lips, then reached out and cut the transmission. Willow found herself lost in the darkness of the screen that now filled the space where Jen’s face had been. After a while she finally pulled herself up out of her bunk and shut down the console. There would be time to send a message later, but for now Willow’s attentions had to be elsewhere.

    *******

    Jen was exhausted. A few days ago the containment field around the livestock had failed and the pressure dropped. Some of the cows had died from hypoxia, and the chickens had begun to act strange. Their skin had begun to turn a light purple around their orifices. The bio team had yet to determine what exactly was causing it, but the prevailing theory was that some native fungal infection had taken root. The science team had been holing up inside the compound for a few weeks now. The chief scientist had stopped all expeditions to the outside, even those fully suited up.

    She sighed, and leaned back in her chair. She had been cataloguing species at a record pace, but there was not much for a xenobiologist to do when there was no biology to work with. Per protocol, all of the specimens she had been studying in the STP open air lab had been destroyed after the incident with the livestock.

    She was idly chewing at the inside of her mouth when she saw a notification come in. She thought to just clear it, but realized it was a message from Willow. It had been months since they had communicated with each other, but she suddenly sat forward at the realization and hungerly opened the missive.

    The screen played out the image of the inside of a docking bay, with Willow’s disembodied voice coming over the speakers. There was a loud, rhythmic crashing, and a white plastic and metal automaton came into the frame, wires trailing it that attached to a box that Willow was holding.

    “It’s not done yet, but look how much it can pick up,” Willow said, making the robot bend down in front of a large crate and then lifting it effortlessly. “If they won’t give me access to loaders for my projects, then I’ll make my own. Just because we’re in zero g doesn’t mean the gear doesn’t have inertia.”

    The message continued with Willow parading the machine around and manipulating more things in the bay. Jen was impressed by the machine, but her attention kept falling to the contrast of Willow’s tan skin against the white plastic of the robot. She loved to see Willow light up when she had a new project, especially one that worked. Sometimes her messages would end in tragedy, like when her cart racer lost the wheels when she went full send and snapped an axle.

    Willow stopped playing with the robot and came and sat in front of the camera. “Anyway, it’s been kind of boring out here. We’re moving the rig to a new site, so it’s just me and the darkness for a few days.” She gestured to the cupola at the end of the engineering bay, which showed up as a black, yawning void on camera.

    Jen heard the sadness in Willow’s voice. She knew that Willow did not do well without a job. She had such a hard time sitting still.

    “Anyway,” said Willow, “I hope things are going okay for you. I know we’re both busy, but don’t be a stranger.” She let out a long sigh. “I miss hearing your voice, sometimes I replay your messages just to hear it. I…good bye, Jen. I’ll talk to you soon.”

    The video ended, and Jen sat for a long time in her chair, replaying those last few words in her head. It was so strange to have such a deep connection to someone you’ve never met in person, but this was the way things were. Humanity had become so spread out, and at current reckoning, Jen was around 60,000 light years from Willow. Sending messages via quantum tunneling was one thing, but entire bodies, well, that was another. Sure, all of the parts would get there, but what came out on the other side wasn’t what one could call human. Organisms tended to not survive being broken down into light and reassembled.

    *******

    Willow was groggy as she came out of suspension. She hated being put under, but luckily this was a short trip. At full throttle it was just two months to the next debris field they were planning on salvaging. She sat up in the pod and coughed out a glut of grey-white goo. What an absolutely foul way to travel.

    After toweling off and finding some clothes she sat down in front of her console before even heading to the shower. In her suspension she had strange dreams, and had hoped she would have a message from Jen.

    After scrolling furiously through all of the spam and work notifications, she had a message from the one person she had come to realize meant more to her than anything in this universe, and she looked sick.

    Jen’s face filled the frame, but she seemed tired. Her hair was greasy, her face looked thin, and she was paler than usual. What concerned Willow the most though, was the slight purple tint that ringed her eyes, mouth, and nostrils.

    “I think it makes me look exotic,” Jen said through raspy breath and with a staccato cough in the middle. “I think magenta is really my color.” Her eyes fell down though, staring for a few seconds at the floor. Her cheery disposition had been replaced with something Willow couldn’t quite grasp. The lines on her face and glassy eyes betrayed many sleepless nights.

    “The medical team thinks we’ll all be fine, but we’ve lost two of my team already. Some of the chickens ended up being fine, though, so I have hope. For now, I have to stay in this stupid little room.” Jen gestured around at the little med bay she had been quarantined in. It was stark white, and had none of the small charms and knick-knacks that Willow had seen in her room.

    “We’ve been having a lot of issues with the climate control though,” Jen said, a small bit of her breath visible as she exhaled. “Most of the engineering team has passed. It seems whatever this is gathers in moist areas, and a lot of the technicians were exposed early on.”

    There was a fit of coughing, and Willow listened as she went on about other things. She had finished a few books, one of which she highly recommended to Willow, even though she knew Willow wasn’t fond of reading. She said she had spent a lot of time watching the robot fighting leagues, and wondered if Willow ever had considered entering herself.

    After a while, Jen looked straight at the camera, and Willow thought in that moment, across all of that distance, that Jen could actually see her. For two years they had existed like this, playing hopscotch with videos over the vast distance between them. A cosmic game of tag that took two people that had never met and made them closer than kin.

    Willow felt her heart sink. For so long she had ached to be able to talk to Jen in real time. To hear her voice first hand, to engage in witty banter, to hold her hand, to gently caress her face, and kiss her. She wanted desperately to feel Jen’s lips on hers. Lips that were ringed with purple from some alien infection.

    Willow’s musings were cut short by another coughing fit from Jen.

    “I really hope I hear from you soon,” Jen said, “most of the others stay away from us in the med bays, and even we’re prevented from interacting with the other infected. I’m so lonely, Willow. I really wish I could curl up next to you. Even if I could just see you on the other side of the glass, that would do me good. Take care.”

    Jen signed off. Willow sat for a long while in silence, accompanied only by the buzzing of various machines. Soon others of her crew began to wake up. She swallowed her emotions and began to get dressed. There must be something that could be done. The distance was so vast, even at full burn, it would take millennia to get to Jen. The ocean of space was only slightly dwarfed by the dark ocean in her soul. It cried out to be illuminated with Jen’s light. There had to be a way.

    *****

    Things got worse for Jen before they got better. The infection spread to many of the colonists. Around half of them had died, but, slowly, over time, the remaining biologists were able to find a way to combat the infection. Jen had to be put into suspension for around a year, and even when brought out, her system had decayed to the point where the doctors were not sure she would survive. Suspension was not always reliable, and she found that she had to relearn to walk and use her left arm. She would live though.

    When Jen was strong enough she was moved from the cryo bay to the med bay, and eventually was allowed back into her room. Her pale complexion had returned to its former state, with only the slightest purple tinge around her eyes, giving her a look of permanent magenta eye shadow. She admitted she kind of liked it.

    All of her accounts had been frozen when she was put under, but she had one message waiting for her, sent shortly before she was suspended.

    Willow’s voice filled her perception, yet is was sullen and raspy.

    “I’ve spent days wracking my brain trying to figure this out. I think I’ve got it.” Willow briefly appeared on the screen, then went out of frame. Jen could hear her fiddling about off camera.

    The screen paused and then the scene jumped ahead. Something entered the picture. It was a stocky, medium sized automaton, with smooth white plastic and shiny aluminum structure that had the vague silhouette of Willow. It had eyes in the right places, and they had been painted to match the pale green orbs that sat in Willow’s head. When it spoke, Willow’s voice came out, yet it had a sort of flanged, metallic quality.

    “What do you think? said machine-Willow. “I spent a very long time trying to make it right, make it look like me. I’ve barely slept in months. I couldn’t bare your last message. I couldn’t bare the distance any longer.” Machine-Willow strode off camera, and returned wearing a similar jumpsuit to the one Jen had seen Willow in earlier, including her nametag.

    “I’m sending this to you,” machine-Willow said. “I’ve managed to get a hold of some of the other colonists. I know you’re not doing well, I know you’re in suspension, but hopefully by the time this gets to you, there will still be time.”

    The robot came and sat in the chair Willow had been sitting in. It’s eyes, though cold and covering up a great many gears and sensors, looked familiar to Jen. She looked straight into those eyes, and saw no difference to the ones she had looked into longingly for so long.

    “I’m coming to see you,” the robot said, “I can’t wait any longer. I wish my body could, but this will have to do. Jen, I love you.”

    The screen went black, and Jen’s heart raced. She was excited about the robot, but a bit of her was disappointed that it would just be that, a machine. Still, over the past year, she was sure that quite a bit of Willow’s personality could have been programmed into the automaton. She felt herself getting tired, and for the first time in a very long time, she sunk into her own bed, and let herself go to sleep naturally.

    *****

    Willow woke up confused and in pain. She couldn’t feel parts of herself. There were people in technician’s uniforms standing around her, holding pieces of her. An arm, a leg, she watched, paralyzed, as her head moved closer to her body. In a few minutes the technicians had her attached, and soon things began to feel better. She was in her body again, and what a relief it was.

    The last thing she had remembered was sitting in the chair of the transporter. She had been afraid. She remembered looking down at her white plastic skin and prayed that everything would be alright. Afterall, nothing like this had been tried before. She felt cold like this. The technicians helped her to her feet, and she took a few steps.

    “Everything seems to be in order, run a diagnostic,” one of them said. Willow held up her hand and flexed it in front of her eyes. Everything seemed fine.

    “I’m good,” she said, her metallic voice squeaking out of her robotic mouth. She walked around, stretched. This wasn’t so bad.

    “Let me in,” came a cry from a familiar voice beyond the door to the transport chamber. Willow then saw the most beautiful sight she had ever seen, with these eyes or her old ones. Before her stood a tall, lanky woman, pale skin, dark brown hair, and magenta eye shadow.

    Willow reached out to shake her hand, but Jen just hugged her metallic frame. “I’ve missed you so dearly,” Jen said. They stayed like that for a while, and eventually they broke off, and Willow followed Jen to her quarters.

    Willow stood in the corner while Jen sat down in front of her console. “I just have to message Willow and let her know you’ve arrived safely.” She began to record, and Willow moved in front of the camera, and knelt down in front of her. She put a hand on Jen’s lap and placed her hand in hers.

    “Jen, there’s something you have to know. Willow’s not, I’m not there anymore.” Jen looked at her confused.

    “What are you saying?” Jen said.

    Willow stood up and began to pace around the room. She told Jen of how she had developed the robot, how long it took, how much time she spent on it.

    “It couldn’t have been an approximation. That wouldn’t have been enough,” Willow said, staring at Jen with eyes that had far more to them then just the components that made them. “Jen, this is me. I had to put all of me into this machine, or else it wouldn’t work. I had to see you, with my own eyes, even if they weren’t my biological ones. It couldn’t have been a copy, that would have been incomplete.” Willow could see tears start to well up in Jen’s eyes, accompanied by a slow understanding. Jen grimaced.

    Willow faced the corner of the room. “I know this is probably a shock, but that body, my old body, is just a shell now, hell, the crew has probably already disposed of it. I understand if you’d rather not be around me, I understand if this changes…” Willow was interrupted by the warm feeling of Jen’s biological arms going around her metallic waist. She could feel her breath on the back of her, lighting up every touch sensor she had as Jen pressed her face into her cold, plastic skin.

    They stood like that for a long while, in silence. Jen squirmed a bit, and Willow stood fast, waiting for countless seconds until Jen spoke.

    “I’ve waited for you for so long, and I faced the veil of death thinking I would never get to hold you,” Jen said. “What matters to me is that it is you, not whatever form you take. If i can fall in love with a recording of you, then I am beyond ecstatic to have you here with me in person.”

    Jen let go of Willow’s waist and she turned around to face her. Jen was slightly taller than her mechanical frame, but she looked up into her blue-brown eyes, and felt more at home then she ever had been on the salvage ship. She leaned up and kissed her, and felt her mechanical body come alive in a way that her biological one never had.

    “I love you,” Jen said, “come on, let me show you my world.” They left the room, and the habitat, and Willow held Jen’s hand as she stepped out underneath an alien sun, into a whole new life.

  • Paddle your own spacesuit

    I have a very interesting relationship with alcohol. I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to define that relationship. It certainly isn’t a relationship I have a lot of control over, but I do think it’s one I can figure out.

    My brain never shuts up. I’ve been known to say that I am “existentially tired,” and that’s why. Even my dreams are a bundle of horrible worries inserted into the VCR of my less than wakeful consciousness. Especially recently, it seems. Enter in alcohol.

    Nothing takes away all of those worries like alcohol. The constant barrage of thoughts ends for a brief few hours. Add to it the boost in confidence, and the final escape into oblivion, and you have a perfect drug for dealing with a mind that is far from stable. It is the one thing I keep coming back to, and probably always will.

    At times in my life I definitely could have been considered an alcoholic. I’ve ruined relationships because of my drinking. I’ve ruined days, weeks, jobs, hearts, property, all in the name of escaping myself. While I seem to (mostly) have a handle on things, sometimes I go a bit too far, and once I lose control, I definitely become and act like a person that I dislike far worse than the person I’m trying to escape from.

    If there has been one hallmark of my transition, it has been that it is a supreme act of self love. This whole journey was started because I was faced with the question of “why do I hate myself so much?” Well, a big reason is that I hated this meat spacesuit I pilot around. It was, in fact, a HUGE reason, and things are better, but they aren’t perfect. Now I’ve come to realize that I still have a long way to go to feel good about the pilot.

    Shame is a powerful motivator, and where in the past I’ve always tended to wallow in my self loathing after doing something I regret, now I really want to get to the bottom of it. I know that I have the capacity in me to feel better. I feel better every day I look in the mirror, and that is because I decided to make figuring out the source of my troubles a supreme priority.

    So, why then, do I hate the pilot? Is the disconnect I have between body and mind the issue? Is there some sort of unification I can bring to the two, so that the growing love I have for the outside can flow to the inside? I always feel as if my emotions, my problems, have no weight given the emotions and problems of others. As I am reminded often by those around me, I am too hard on myself. I also have a bad case of the “people pleasies.” I will go out of my way to do anything for everyone, but if I slip up, if I need help, if I get all in my cups and cry and let the flood gates open, that somehow feels wrong.

    I love it when people open up to me. I love playing therapist, but even now, even having the logical ability to see how one sided and insane it is that others wouldn’t also enjoy doing those things for me, I can’t give myself the grace to accept it. When I think about being anything else than the confident girl who can do anything for anyone, when I think about needing help myself, then the feelings of doubt and shame creep in. Suddenly, the illusion is destroyed. When others need help they’re simply human, and deserving. When I need it, it has to explode out of me in a horrible way, and then I feel worthless and small because of it.

    So I’m trying. I’m going to stop feeling sorry for myself, accept that I’ve made a mistake, and move on. I’m going to start trying to recognize when I need a little guidance, or a hand, and not let it all fester inside of me to where only under the lubrication of some substance or another it comes out, because the truth is I am worthy of having the same things I so willingly give to others. I’m not a terrible person. What I’m doing is a brave thing (despite how much I get tired of hearing it.) Am I more unstable now? Yes and no. This phenomenon is not a new thing for me, in fact, this whole “charge and discharge” thing is right out of deadname’s playbook, but I’m not him anymore, and I can be better.

    I’m not saying it won’t be a long road, but I am saying that I’m going to walk it, instead of drunkenly stumble down it. I’m worth that much, and I’d like to remember it as much as I can. I didn’t start transition to come out on the other end the same as I went in. I aim to be better, and if I can’t make the spacesuit be indistinguishable from me, then I want to fill it so completely that the lining on the inside feels like home.