Category: Personal

Zeitgeist 3/16/26

I guess I could subtitle this one “Trans in 2026”

We’re about 5 days out from the Equinox. It’s raining pretty good out my window. A few days ago, the aspect of the world was whiteness everywhere, and right now the whiteness is almost gone, being replaced by a muddy grey/brown/green, like bad color blending.

My sweetie is planning to make soda bread today and guinness stew tomorrow. Soda bread is OK, but the sweetness and strong caraway flavor is not something that I look forward to the way she does. I do love me some guinness stew, though, and the soda bread will go with it just fine.

The world continues to be a rolling disaster, and it’s not particularly “slow-rolling,” though the pace could pick up significantly, if certain people aren’t stopped. On that note, there’s building speculation that Bibi Netanyahu is dead, although there’s no confirmation of that other than the worrying “proof of life” videos that are clearly AI fakes.

There are two genocides going on in the Israeli sphere, both funded by the US, both intended to clear the way for Israeli expansion. There’s a third major conflict in the area – the bombing and proposed invasion of Iran – also funded on the US credit card, and adding to the depletion of US weapons stores. China and Russia have aligned behind Iran, as the US has aligned with Israel. The major powers are in opposition and things are escalating quickly. It feels like both a cliché and an understatement to say that this situation is not sustainable. But TPTB are certainly hoping to maintain the awfulness.

Domestically, we are in the midst of midterm primary election season, with a deeply unpopular President who wants nothing more than to be an authoritarian monarch in the style of Vladimir Putin or even Kim Jong Un holding sway and openly plotting to steal the upcoming elections.

The espablishment opposition party is not resisting nearly hard enough. Even the wannabe dictator has remarked on it. He thought his takeover was going to be a lot harder than it has been. The street-level response has been fierce, if entirely nonviolent opposition. That opposition hasn’t got the power to make changes on its own, but it is slowing down the fascists significantly, making itself heard on the streets, if not in the oligarch-controlled mass media. The real victory so far is that people continue to resist and to hope for better.

The anti-ICE and No Kings protests are keeping me alive right now, in more ways than one. As the fascists continue to scapegoat not only immigrants but also trans folk like me, it’s very stressful to watch what’s happening in the world, and yet I can’t look away. I spend a considerable amount of mental energy thinking about ways to flee the country, but if I’m being honest, I have to acknowledge that moving from here would be very difficult.

I suppose I’m gambling that ICE won’t make it this far. Or that being trans won’t be made a crime in Massachusetts and that I’ll be protected here. But whatever happens, I can’t predict now, everything beyond the horizon seems shrouded.

Babtists

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists.

I was raised in Southern Baptist churches. Every moment of my young life I felt like an outsider. The Baptists helped with that. Inside me was the hard truth that every day, I secretly wished I was a girl. I heard over and over again from the churchy people in my family, who insisted (without knowing what was true of me, because I kept that secret buried deep inside) that people with sin in their hearts were bound for Hell, and that femininity in a male was a sickness and a sin.

I was presented with a choice. And my choice was to embrace my whole self: to be a good person, and to let the idea that I was inherently evil go, instead of internalizing the self-hatred I had been raised to. Every positive step I’ve taken since then has led to a larger worldview and a stronger sense of myself in the larger context.

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists. This is not to say that I have not been a little shit at times in my life. I have. I acknowledge that I have made mistakes, as everyone does, and I continue to try to move forward and choose to take good action for myself and those I love as best I can.

But the Southern Baptist Council, the governing body of the churches I attended as a child, continues to dehumanize and marginalize people, and continues to believe that its views should rule this country and hold dominion over this world. At the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention, attendees voted to actively oppose Obergefeld, to exclude from membership any church with a female pastor, and to keep the SBC’s financials from being made public, thereby confirming their ideology as toxic.

Of course, they also have this effed up resolution, dated June 1st, 2014, that permanently separates me from the ideology of much of my family: On Transgender Identity, which is contradictory and hateful on a profound level. They claim that “we love our transgender neighbors” and in the same document resolve to “oppose all cultural efforts to validate claims to transgender identity,” rendering the whole document nonsensical and branding themselves once again as hypocrites.

And that’s at the heart of my exit from that religion and from the positive regard of much of my family.

not my family, not my church

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Where the Snow Doesn’t Turn Black

It all speaks to some kind of elevated daily existence…

I live in a house in the country. I’ve lived here for 4 years now.

The people are friendly. I have never felt so comfortable to participate in conversations as I do here. The conversational pace is slow enough that my introvert-standard split-second processing pause before I speak doesn’t ace me out of the craic every time, just maybe about half the time. It may seem counterintuitive, since there are so many more things to be a part of in the cities and towns I’ve lived in before, but I feel more a part of things here. I’m still an introvert, and that will never change, but the personal battery doesn’t drain as much in a crowd here.

The light is gorgeous around my house. It’s strange. Is this a byproduct of cleaner air? Perhaps. There is a more crystalline, more buttery aspect to the light, a kind of radiance that I find soothing and wondrous. I feel attached to the environment here. I have a large yard that needs maintenance (which I’m only OK at attending to, it must be said) but it pays dividends in many ways. The many beautiful shades and hues of green, the flowers — some planted by previous residents here, some volunteers/wildflowers, some we’ve planted ourselves — that one can see from every one of the many windows in this house, the purity of the snow as it hugs the ground, never going black, never taking on the smoke and cinders and road filth the stuff always did in the city, the open space… it all speaks to some kind of elevated daily existence.

I call this “motif #1.” I’ve taken this picture many times.

And that’s not to say that life is perfect. Nope, nope, nope. I don’t have a place to go walking here. There are no sidewalks. If I want to go for a walk, I have to either risk the traffic along Main Rd. (which is not insignificant, and some people drive through here at well above the speed limit) or get in the car and drive 5 miles to find a place to walk. Either way, it’s inconvenient, and as a result I’ve put on a fair amount of weight. My life is far too sedentary.

But this is a problem that I can address, and will. And if I can manage that much, I believe my life “out here” will be all the better for the extra effort, and that there may be some unexpected benefits to go along with it. One idea I’ve had to make these benefits manifest is to do some nature journaling. I’ve done it before. It’s been fun and it’s taught me stuff about the natural world and about myself.

So, yeah.

I love it here. In the places I can see from my window and in this beautiful crooked little house, life is sweet.

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Controversial Beliefs

  • Evidently, the most controversial belief I hold is that I am a woman. This one may get me killed at some point, or cause me to move to Europe. And then get me killed.
  • I think I would like to live in a small one-bedroom apartment in Bergen, Norway with Karen.
  • I think Yes’s Fly From Here – Return Trip may be one of the band’s best albums. We’ll talk more about this one at some future point.
  • I think when Donald Trump is dead and gone, all of this crap about him is going to come out and I think the world at large will be collectively mind-blown by the depravity the man has inhabited his whole life.

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