Coming Clean

It's around 4am and again I can not sleep.  I suppose it is symptomatic of the fact that my life is crumbling around me.   I can't really say.  For me though at this very moment it is just plain annoying.  I have decided to call these sleepless nights for lack of a better description, P.R.S., or Phoenix Rising Syndrome.  Not that I have a need to label it or anything, it is just easier to slap an acronym onto it saying,  

"Oh yeah, P.R.S. visited last night and insisted on hanging out with me all night again.  He is a rather annoying chap but after all is said and done he is still a friend."

I think I would rather have him as an enemy if the truth be told.  And speaking of truth telling I guess now is as good a time as any for me to come clean.

Many of you know my story but for those of you that don't, here goes.

In many of my previous blogs I have mentioned my insane childhood without giving details.  At the time I wrote those entries I felt it wasn't really necessary to divulge more other than saying it was indeed insane .  Now I feel it is the right time.

My childhood I suppose was like most when looking from the outside in.  We were the typical "traditional" family unit, the one that many in politics like to refer to so readily.  My father worked while my mother took care of the house.  Originally there were three of us kids.  My sister, who died of Leukemia at age 5, my brother who is 4 years older, and me.  We went to a fundamentalist Baptist church, one that adhered to the literal interpretation of the Bible, twice on Sundays and once on Wednesday evenings.  Sound familiar?  We could have been the poster family for the Traditional Values Coalition.  That was the view from the outside.  My experience from the inside was markedly different.

At the age of 8 I started being sexually abused.  I still do not know who it was that initiated this and at this stage of my recovery it isn't really important.  After while, someone or someone(s) started to facilitate my being "farmed out" to others for their pleasure.  This took a decidedly serious turn when that "pleasure" became, I guess, insane.  At some point in my 9th year I began to be forced to submit to being exploited sexually for the purpose on being filmed.  In my 10th year or so that exploitation slowly changed into me being  sexually tortured as they were filming and as things stand now I feel that eventually I was also forced to submit to playing some type of role in snuff films.  By my 12th year I was no longer "in demand" or even desirable for them as I had reached puberty.   

For many years after that I very effectively suppressed my experiences and by extensive huge swaths of my childhood.  Like many too, I did not "wake up" to the fact I had been abused until I was 47 years old.  That happened in the fall of 2004.  I guess I was a text book case of how that all unfolded as well.  My life and my long term relationship at the time had slowly begun to unravel some years before, not to say that the relationship was healthy before that.  It wasn't.  My partner at the time had been a meth addict for years and an addict of many drugs before that.  I also had my addictions too.  And plenty of them.  Anyways to make a very long story more concise, it was the Spring of 2004 that I started feeling and articulating the need for finding a safe place in which I could exist.  By the summer I had unwound my 25 year relationship with my partner and ended it.  He left and within a month my abuse memories started to surface.  Luckily I had already been with my therapist for a number of years so we were quickly able to handle the change in direction.  However, in hindsight, it did take a number of years for me to find my feet in the ensuing chaos of it all.  

I do feel much better these days and more functional too most of the time.  However, I do still have those days when my life seems just as chaotic as it did in the early stages of my recovery.  So I guess that begs the question to be asked; would I change anything if I had a choice?  I have actually asked myself that question many times especially when I am in what I call "my personal hell."  The answer in the end is always the same.  No, I wouldn't change a thing. 

Am I glad that I ended what was in reality an insane long term relationship?  Yes.  Am I glad that I woke up to my experiences?  Definitely Yes.   My life has become so much more sane now.   This is not to say that it's all kittens chasing butterflies in the meadow.  It isn't. Sometimes and maybe even most times it is messy and very very painful as anyone who reads my blogs can attest.  

I have to say too that the gifts of my recovery have been many.   I would have probably never started writing if I had not gotten into recovery.  And writing has brought so much joy into my life!!  I would not have gotten the gift of hope that one day I would be OK, that one day in the not too distant future I will actually have a life that is no longer affectively or realistically influenced by the fact of my childhood experiences.  More inportantly, that on the way to that day, I would have learnt that living in the present is what life is actually suppose to be all about. 

And finally, I would have never gotten the gift of hope that I could have a sane and healthy loving relationship with someone without losing myself in the process.  Something I am now attempting to build with Dino.  

I guess the bottom line to all of this is that by being in recovery I have finally gotten my life back.  And at the end of the day that is all I really want.  

Well not really.  I also want a country house with 2 acres of land so I can have a proper garden; and money, don't forget about money.  Not a lot of it.  I don't want to be greedy.   Just enough of it so I no longer have to worry.  

Oh, yeah, while I'm at it.  I want hair.  Not Hair Club for Men hair either.  I want my old hair back.  Well not really.  What I want is the wavy thick dark hair I had for about the first 3 minutes after I was born.  OK, while I'm in dream mood.  Goddess, could you get rid of all the hair that incessantly grows in places that it never use to.  Cool!!! 

Thanks Big G!!

 

Writing and the Act of Trusting

I just finished some rewrites on my short story entitled The Orchard.  It was one that I had written some months ago while I was in a short story writing class at State.  Like most, the idea of it had originated during an in class free write.  But like most, it ended up languishing in my notebook for about a year before forming into a story during this class.  I finished it and another during the six weeks I was there and on the strength of my convictions I had sent it off to a magazine contest, both to get exposure and valuable feedback.  It was rejected;  but I did get some great feedback.  This was one of the reasons I had chose this particular magazine, because they promised, like some, that they would make line by line comments; and they did.  A lot of them.  The woman who evaluated my story was very sweet and supportive.  Her comments were also eye opening.  She suggested that I add another scene. something to soften the story up.  I reread her comments several times after which I printed them out, filing them away, attached to my hard copy.  And that's where they stayed.  In my filing cabinet.  In the closet.  Collecting dust.  It wasn't because I was angry or hurt.  Quite the contrary.  After reading her comments I knew that I had to just put the story away until Channel showed me some guidance.   That guidance came about two weeks ago just as I was falling asleep.  It was the missing scene.  Not laid out in detail.  Channel doesn't work that way.  I was excited, intrigued, and a little mystified when I sat down because I didn't know how it was going to end up.  But when I began to type the guidance came and I was in the zone for about 3 hours.  That germ that first appeared that night became an idea that became what I can only describe as the main thread of the story, the thread that holds it all together.  So I continued to write furiously, that is until my lap top went, BLOOP.  Yup, you guessed it.  The damn thing powered itself down before I had a chance to save the rewrite.   Now this could have had something to do with the fact that I had neglected to plug it into an outlet in the first place but I refuse to admit out loud that I was that..... well neglectful.  I do remember though crying NOOOOOOOO just after the screen went black but after a while I was OK.  I guess all writers experience this at some time or another.  

No?  

Really?  

They all remember to plug the damn laptop in?  

Really? 

Oh, sorry, I'm drifting again.

The reason I was not mad, well I was mad at me, but the reason I didn't stay mad at me was because I knew that Channel would still be there, waiting, ready with more guidance, for the next time I could sit down to write.

I remember when I first started writing I would stop whatever I was doing if a story began forming itself in my consciousness.  Then, I was terrified that if I didn't write it down immediately I would lose the seed, or even worse, that Channel would just close down forever. It took time, a lot of time, before I realized that I didn't have to capture in the moment whatever was being written in my head.  It took me a lot of time too to understand that my writing wasn't just about the act of writing.  It was also about the vehicle that I was to use to relearn the act of trusting in what I could only describe as a spiritual entity.  I was good with the religious stuff, always had been, even though I laughingly refer to myself as a lapse Episcopalian, if there is such a thing.  But to trust again.  After my trust had so horribly been breached.  That was asking a lot.  So I began to test Channel by writing when I had the time and not when the seed appeared.  At first I was scared but I did it anyways.  I would purposely not write until after a week or so just to see if the idea was still there.  It always was.  Not only that, I was also gaven seeds of ideas that Channel would later build on like my short story entitled The Orchard.  

This act of trusting has also effected other parts of my life as I have also begun to learn how trust the guidance that I now find to be so essential to my daily activities.  I have to say too that I am continually amazed at the power of this; this act of trusting in a power greater than myself.  Maybe, in the end, this is what it is all about anyways.  Why I was given the gift of writing.  I guess only the Goddess knows for sure.   And that for me is the greatest part about it all.  

 

Phoenix Rising

My life is crumbling all around me and my therapist quite frankly will be thrilled.  This is not to say that he is a sadist.  Far from it.  He has always been very supportive and he has always had only my best interest at heart.  The reason he will be thrilled is because he knows just what it all means for me.  And now so do I.

For decades my life has been like a well fortified castle.  Solid, forbidding, and for the most part impregnable.   I suppose it was an outgrowth of my insane experiences as a child.  And I guess that it served a purpose too.  When I was in my 8th year I had needed a place where I could retreat to.  A place of safety.  One that I could call my own.  That castle, the one I built in response to the craziness, became my hiding place.  

It was an idyllic area, this place where I built.   The countryside was amazing and bucolic, all various shades of green intermingled with rolling hills and trees.  The kind of place that Frederick Law Olmstead use to love to create in the 19th Ce.  It even had a meandering stream far off in the distance, one that feed the trees and wild flowers that grew near to its banks.  

However, as time has gone by the countryside has changed.  The once rolling hills have become fallow and full of weeds dotted only with a collection of dead and withered trees whose only purpose is seemingly sculptural.  Too, that stream, the one that was meandering far off in the distance, has itself become a raging torrent, one that is getting closer and closer to my castle all the time.  I suppose I have known all along that these changes had been taking place.  That my pastoral setting had been replaced.  I suppose I have tried to deny the danger that the river represents too.  But the river is too close now and it has begun to eat away at my foundations. 

My castle has not been spared the ravages of time either.  It too has suffered, becoming a broken down fortress that both time and necessity have slowly dismantled.   My once solid stones walls have crumbled under their own weight leaving gaping cracks that allow dusty shafts of golden light to shine down into the soaring galleries.   Even the mighty oak rafters, splintered and aged over time, have become havens for all of the birds who have sought sanctuary to create their aeries.  

I can't say that my life is crumbling as the result of the big reorganization at work which has been brewing for over a month, the one that is my current source of craziness.  If pressed I would have to say that its origins are rooted in the Spring of 2006 when my body gave way and I became ill.  Since that time I have been struggling, both physically and emotionally.  This is not to say that I have not made great strides.   I have come to terms with a great many things over the last three and a half years and I have established a solid and integral spiritual connection with a power greater than myself.  But all of this has not been enough because I have not yet experienced the true powerlessness that will come when my castle is finally destroyed.

So here I stand as the final bits of my life crumble around me.  I have to say I feel a lot like San Francisco did in those first three days after the earthquake, those days when the raging inferno began eating its way across the hills and valleys of the City.  I particularly feel like that group of men and women who were standing at the top of Sacramento Street that first morning watching as the fire crept up the hill towards them, destroying their life in the process, the one they had always known.   

Just like that group, I now stand here watching my life, the one I have always known since my castle building days, crumble as the raging river destroys what is left of my foundations. Watching and waiting, hoping that my Phoenix will rise out of the destruction just as San Francisco's did after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. 

Labels and the State of Being

At the best of times it is extremely difficult for me to be present in my body for any length of time.  I know that this is about the legacy of my insane childhood and it's effects on my body then and now.  My Yoga teacher Darren defines it as "issues in the tissues."   

It is a fact that my body has held on to the trauma of my childhood and that it has had a profound effect on my life.  On any given day my trauma rears its ugly head in a number of different ways.  It may be pain, muscle spasms, frightening visuals, and/or full on body memories.  Recently in the wee hours of the morning I had a full on body memory accompanied by both visuals and audio lasting for a full twenty minutes before subsiding.   It took a huge toll on my body and it took my body weeks to recovery from it.  I can sit here and say unequivocally that my daily life is effected in a very real way by the trauma of my childhood and it is difficult for me to deal with.  

So last week my therapist asked me to write about who I am beside the legacy of my childhood.   I get why he wants me to do this.  Its all about separating the Then for the Now and about my ability to live my life instead of just existing.   I have actually done this in my head many times before I just haven't ever written it down.  Maybe this will do the trick.

So who am I?  

I am many things and I am nothing.  (The word nothing scares me.)  

There are things I do like gardening, writing, and even the occasional whip around with a feather duster.  (I got that last one from my favorite Brit Com.)  But does that make me a gardener or a writer or even a house cleaner?  Or are these just labels?  

What if I answer it by saying, what do I feel?  For instance, do I feel like a gardener or is gardening just an escape?  Do I feel like a writer or even a house cleaner for that matter?  The answer for writing is yes; however, so much of it is rooted in my childhood experiences that the lines between Then and Now often blur quite a bit.   What about a house cleaner then?  I just don't do enough of it to even be qualified to answer that one.

So could it be that I am just a series of labels or do I actually have real meaning?  I guess I would have to go back to what I said early.  

I am many things and I am nothing.  

When I first wrote that phrase I was afraid that nothing literally meant, nothing; that I was devoid of any true meaning.  But that is not true.  I get it now.   Nothing actually means everything.  It means the labels are the ones that lack real substance not me.  I get that it means my life is really all about "being" not "doing".  That very minute of every day is all about "being" present in my body not just active in my body.

So then who am I?

I am my breath.

I am my heart beat.

I am the blood that courses through my veins.

A Death in the Family

There has been a death in the family although it is not what you would describe as a typical one.  The death in the family was the untimely ending 2 days ago of the last major drag show in Polk Gulch.  Anna Conda's Charlie Horse, the Friday night drag show at The Cinch, was an institution here in Polk Gulch even at the tender age of 5.    CH was the place to be on Friday nights.  But it was not just a drag show.  It provided the stage for many of the up and coming drag performers to learn their trade and many of the old standards of New Drag to strut their stuff.  CH was irreverent, political, and amazing.  And the audiences were enthusiastic. However, this is not just about the ending of a friday night drag show.  The death of CH is symbolic of a much wider trend here in the City.  And that is the death of a part of the gay community that finds its roots back to the old days, the days when it was not acceptable for gays and lesbians to be visual, publicly or personally.   Those roots, the ones tied unequivocally to our fight for the freedom to assembly without harassment, are under siege for all sides; within the gay community and without.  

Polk Gulch itself is going through a transformation.  For the last 6 years or so it has become the chosen place, by default,  for developers to built the cookie cutter condos that are all the rage now.  In many other parts of the City developers have been stopped from razing whole sections of neighborhoods like mine.   The dot com laid the ground for that as during that time Soma was all but destroyed by redevelopment.  Almost all of the post '06 history was wiped out in huge swaths putting the Leather community among others who called Soma home, under pressure from the forces of gentrification.  The developers, whose only intention in my opinion was the making money, destroyed much of Soma.  In the ensuing "peoples revolt", the City has backed down in  the "wipe the slate clean" mentality of redevelopment.  However, they have lost their way in the process.  Polk Gulch and the ending of CH is a prime example of this.  

Everywhere you look, buildings that even sniff of being underutilized are being targeted by developers.  That was the case with an old church building behind The Cinch.  It was replaced by condos and it is those residents who are complaining about the noise.

We have lost much here in my neighborhood and with each passing day and with each building lost, we the residents here continue to lose a part of ourselves and our community. 

But I can't lay the entire blame at the feet of developers or the steps of City Hall.  We, the gay community, are to blame too.  Not because we didn't fight long or hard enough, but because we are gentrifying too.  It is evident everywhere you look.  We, I suppose, have been seduced by the promises of freedom, equal rights, and the ability to live openly anywhere we chose.  But at what cost?

Polk Gulch had been, in the 1960's and early 70's, the first true Gay neighborhood before The Castro became the place to be.  At it's heyday there were 25 plus bars and tons of gay owned and operated businesses.  That is why I moved here.  But Polk wasn't just a gay neighborhood.  There was a distinct feeling of rootedness here.  Of history.  Yes, the old Polk was wiped out in the great Quake and Fire, but it's reincarnation still lived and breathed it's history.  If you listened closely you could still here the cable cars trundling up and down the Polk, Sutter, and Larkin Streets.  You could hear the clip clop of the horses as they came out of their barns before making their way up to the Mansions on Van Ness.   You could smell the grittiness of McTeague's back alleys.  It was all there for me and I dare say probably for many others too.  That connection to it's roots, the ones so many of us were torn from when our family's of origin denied our existence, became our rootedness, our family.  But that attraction, that pull towards community and visibility has all but gone here on Polk; and if we are not careful, the Castro too.  Not because of redevelopment, although it has hastened it's death, but because we have in many ways achieved what were have always fought for.  The right to, for the most part, live freely and openly whereever we chose.   The problem with that is we, here in San Francisco, have achieved what the rest of the country has not.  And in the process we are losing our community and our meeting places, the very ones we fled to when we were escaping our own hells.  

I feel if we are not careful we may very well loss what we have fought for so hard.  I feel that when we move out of our neighborhoods, spreading out across the City and Bay Area, we loss not only our connectiveness but our visibility too.  In a sense we are willingly going back into the closet from which we came just for the sake of saying we have arrived.  That we have made it.  But again I ask at what cost?  

I feel strongly that we still need our communities like Polk, Castro and in it's smaller incarnation, Charlie Horse, not only for it to be a beacon to the kids everywhere who want to live the dream but for ourselves too.  For our sense of community, rootedness, and more importantly our need to be visible. 

Shadow and Light

The use of shadow and light to produce contrast, Chiaroscuro, finds it's origins in Renaissance drawings but can also be traced back further to illuminated manuscripts and probably further back then that.  Manipulating the contrast between light and dark can actually be a very powerful tool not only in art but in life.  I use it, albeit with gradations of three different colors, in my garden to produce contrast that draws the eye to a particular focal point.   I also use that contrast of three colors to create unity in the garden as mine is broken up into many smaller areas spread over four different terraces.  A good test of this principle is to place a burgundy plant behind a charteuse one.  The contrast in color makes the burgundy disappear and the chartreuse stand out.  These are two of the three main colors I happen use in my garden, the other being a mid range green.  

It's interesting to me that the principles of Chiaroscuro can create a distinct feeling of unity as well as contrast.   But this is not just another bit of art history lore or a course in garden design. Chiaroscuro, for lack of a better term, describes my life.

I have two distinct parts to me.  One exists in the light while the other exists in the shadow.  For many years I didn't even know that the shadow part existed; but it did.  I also didn't know that it was a powerful hidden force buried deep in my psyche, controlling me and my every move.  And the motion that resulted was running.  I ran constantly.  It didn't matter where or when.  I just ran.  From April of 1976 to the fall of 1979 when I moved into the City I never lived in any one place for more that about four months.  I remember how potent the call of the road was for me.  One day in particular is burned into my memory.  I had just got off the midnight shift and was pulling out of the restaurant's parking lot just off the Interstate in southeastern Wisconsin.  I had a choice. Go back to the apartment or hit the road.  It took all that I could muster to turn the wheel of my car towards my apartment.  Soon after, I found the excuse I needed to hit the road.  A few weeks after that morning, I came back to my shared apartment to find my lover in bed with another man.  By 2p that day I was already well into Iowa.  I ended going back though.  Why don't not know.  We split up soon after that and I was on the road again, for real this time.  Bouncing between states in the lower 48 like a superball that was thrown against a wall in a very large room.  Constantly on the move, ricochetting all over the place with a force that defied logic.  (BTW, for all you who don't know what a superball is, check it out on Wikipedia.  Shit, I just realized part of my childhood is now a reference point in an online encyclopedia.  Goddess, do I feel old now.  BRB, got to check the mirror to see if I have just turned 103.) 

Sorry, drifting.  

Anyways, Chiaroscuro and Me.  Wow, that would make a great movie title. 

Sorry, drifting again.  

There is a point to all of this, really.  Now if I could just remember what it is.

Ah; yes; running, ricochetting, moving every four months.  Got it.

Chiaroscuro became a way of life for me from early on.  Shadow and light, pulling, pushing, driving me to the brink of insanity.  The thing I had been running from not that I had realized it yet, was actually me, or to be more precise, the legacy of my insane childhood.  So with the help of a really good therapist, I stopped.  From shear exhaustion I suppose too. But I did stop.  Long enough to see the insanity of my life, my relationship at the time, and my driving need to be in perpetual motion.  By the Fall of 2004 my shadow came out into the light.  And it has been showing itself every since.  

Coming to terms with my childhood hasn't been easy by any stretch of the imagination.  It has been profoundly grueling and intensely painful.  But I did it and continue to do it with every breath I take.  In hindsight, I still do not understand why I decided to stop, not really.  It wasn't just the influence of my therapist.  It also wasn't just me waking up one day saying; oh gee, too tired, don't feel like running anymore, time to stop.  I suppose, if I had to hazard a guess, the change was probably the result of a convergence of many spoken and unspoken things; things that came together with the deep realization that it had finally become more painful for me to run than it would be for me to stop.  But this is only a guess. 

The Chiaroscuro is still there for the most part, pushing and pulling, influencing my daily life.  I don't think that will ever stop.  And I not sure I want it to anyways because I feel I have a lot more to learn about me, about life, and most importantly, about my legacy. 

 

Channels and Memories

I just reread the very first piece I wrote in the Spring of 2006.  It is about my longing to find my place in the world, where I want to be.  That spring day was also the first time that Channel appeared in my life.  And no I am not referring to an apparition of Coco either.  (You've been reading my list of 25 things on Facebook.)  Channel, pronounced just like the Channel Islands, is the source of my writing, a source that seems to originate somewhere deep inside my core.   Channel is not of any gender that I can speak of.  Channel just is.

Ok, I'll stop drifting now and get back on point.

The opening few lines of my first piece are:

I am an old soul.  I can feel it down deep in my core.  I wonder if this is why I struggle so when I think of where I want to be.

"Where I want to be."  It still resonates in me as I sit here in bed, snuggled under the blankets with my kids laying next to me.  

When I wrote this piece I was at a very difficult place in my life.  I had just gone through a particularly bad patch, health wise, and was struggling to just get by from one day to the next.  In hindsight though, I do not think that my piece was just an ethereal reaction to my situation. There was and is substance to those words, especially the word, Be.  For me, that simple two letter word reaches deep into my core and out into the cosmos.  It represents all of the facets of both my inner and outer existences and, for me, is all encompassing.

That first piece continues by describing how disconnected I felt living here in San Francisco and how I missed the four seasons of my youth and all that they represent.  Sitting here, I can still call up those memories from my early years, things like seeing the intense green of buds that are just about to break in early Spring; the aroma of the sweet warm humid air wafting in the window at daybreak; the sound dried leaves make as their crumbled edges scrap along the sidewalk; the deadening sound of heavy wet snow as it falls on a windless winter night.  All of the things I still remember and they are all of the things I still long for.  I know that these longings are not superficial or just nostalgia. They are deeply connected to my core in ways that I can not explain.   So why am I still here you ask?  Good question.  The easy answer is because I am.  The real answer is because this is where I am meant to be at this time of my life.  So how did I get here you ask?  I'll tell you.

I moved to California in 1978, not because I wanted to, but because a friend of mine filled my head with wonderful stories about her life in the City by the Bay.  After a brief stay in the East Bay I moved into the City in 1979, first staying with friend, then getting a place of my own.  

I have to say that I have developed over the years a deep and abiding love for the Paris of the West.  I have created here a wonderful life for myself, complete with a family that I love deeply, a family who has sustained and loved me through it all.   A family that continues to grow to this day. 

Over the years San Francisco has also become my home, albeit an adopted one.  I love to walk the streets just to listen and connect with the City around me.  And I have found over the years that San Francisco has an energy that is unique in the world, the same energy that Herb Caen, among others, use to write about in their daily columns.  

One of the ways I have claimed the City for my own has been by learning it's history.  I have become an aficionado of San Francisco history, mainly by studying it.   For many years I have searched local bookstores looking for books written by people who have lived here throughout it's short but spectacular history.  Dino and I have a running joke about it too.  When we are out and about I will point out a spot as we pass repeating some fact of history about it.  Then we both turn to each laughing, saying, useless fact number 432,329.   It's true too.  They are useless for the most part, unless for some reason I am meant to become a tour guide in a future life.  But this is how it is for me, how I have survived over the years.  Learning about the City has become one of the ways I try to combat that instinctive core feeling of loss that is always with me.  The loss that is so prevalent to me in my first piece.   The same loss that is the legacy of my insane childhood.  The one that striped me of my innocence at the very tender age of 8. 

That first line "I am an Old Soul" has also become the working title of the novel that Channel is writing at present.  It's a story full of memories, longings, love, death, and ultimately finding the true meaning of Be.  I too hope to find the true meaning of Be in my life time.  Maybe Channel will show me the way.  Maybe, that is what this is all about anyways.  Why Channel has chosen me to be the typist and ultimately why I am meant to be here in the Paris of the West at this time of my life.

Begging the Question

The repeal of Maine's Same Sex Marriage law yesterday is a none too subtle reminder of our place in the world. Being a second class citizen is disheartening at the very least and quite infuriating at best. The militant in me wants to go out into the streets for some good old fashioned head banging and barricade building. Bring Society to its Knees, being my rallying cry. But is that strategy really effective? Has any strategy been really effective? So far I feel that legislatively it has been a mixed bag. We have had our successes and our failures. Same for the courts. What has been a dismissal failure in my opinion is our track record in getting the general population to support our fight for equal rights through the ballot box.

Looking back I think of all of the different groups over the centuries who have fought for what they truly believed in. History is a great teacher for me in this. It is fascinating to look back to see how effective their fight was and what history has to say about it centuries later.

Generally, there have been many revolutions that were fought in the streets. Some succeeded in overthrowing the established order. Others did not. There have also been many groups that have overcome discrimination through civil discourse of one kind or another, while others have not.

So what is it that we are fighting or better yet who? Some would say religion, others the entrenched bigotry of society at large, still others, rampant homophobia. I feel it is all that and more. Basically, I feel we are considered a threat or have been branded so by society. But are we? No, not in the way they think. We are I feel a threat to society's entrenched denial of itself and the true reality of what "Family" really means. Of all of the those things within "Family" that go unspoken, suppressed, and generally swept under the carpet. Things like domestic abuse, sexual abuse, and the effects that addictions have on everyone concerned. All of the things that we know exist within the house of "Family Values". Basically, in our fight generally for equal rights and specifically for the right to marry, we have become the mirror that is reflecting the truth of "Family Values", their truth. And they don't like it!!

So how do we fight this. We can't. Not really. Denial runs very deep in our society and there is not much we can do about it. Oh there are some who speak the truth, me being one of them; but, generally we are a society in denial; about most everything. This wholesale denial is a slippery slope for us too because if we hold up the mirror for very long we will start seeing our reflections as well.

I for one will continue my quest to live my truth and to fight for what I believe in. But while I do I will not lose sight of what I feel is the reality of that fight.

The language of Life

What is the language of life?  Is it sounds, tastes, touch, sight, smell?  Are only one of our 5 senses involved at a time?  Or can they all sometimes work in concert?  Is it only confined to one ordinary event or could this exercise in language take us on a journey that leaves us a fundamentally different person; changed in ways we could never have foreseen.  And can these moments, whatever their origins, evoke in us responses so integral to our existence that we have a spiritual experience that transcend time and space?  I do not know when it comes to others ; however, when it comes to me, I do. 

So then, what is the language of My Life?

It can simply be the smell of turkey roasting in the oven, or the sound of dried leaves scrapping along the sidewalk. It can be a wonderful piece of art in a museum or the sound of newly fallen snow crunching underfoot on a still winters night.  It can be the sound of an organ in a great cathedral playing full stop, its bass reverberating so strongly through my body that it rivals the beating of my heart.  Or it can be the soft feel of my kids fur as I run my hand gently down their backs.  

It can be complicated as many different things known and unknown converge into one magical moment within time and space; like a newly born star, blazing forth for only one split second before extinguishing, forever.   

The language of my life can also be scary too.   Especially when it is a convergence of fearful things from my past, things that seem to haunt my waking mind from just beneath the surface of my skin.  

It can be many things and only one thing.  

This evening the language of my life was demonstrated while I was having my dinner.  I was flipping through the channels when I stopped on a PBS channel where a European Boy Choir, Libera, was singing in concert.  The music was amazing.   Libretti voices, coming together as one, echoing through an ornate Cathedral in the Netherlands.  (I do have to say I am a sucker for this kind of program.)  I sat enjoying the wonderful music for a long time while I finished my meal. 

Then, a piece began with a boy singing single notes, high atop the scales, accompanied by a synthesizer, an orchestra and an organ.  It brought me to tears.  The piece was "Salva Me".  The words, hauntingly beautiful, pulled at all of my senses.  

“Carry me away from the dark I fear, 

when the storm is near,  

from the endless night, 

from blinded sight, 

to a sky of light.  

Free me to fly away.  

Salva Me.”  

It evoked visions of magical places, filled with spiritual beings, tastes of sweet nectar, smells of a verdant forest with a lea clearing.  I reached out to touch the soft grasses of the meadow floor. allowing my body to sink into the warm accepting earth.  I had yearnings to be free of what haunts me and found that it was actually possible.  To be taken away on the wings of the wind.  To soar into the sky.  All this in a just one song.  One I will never forget.

This experience, as sweet and tender, as spiritual and mind blowing, is the language of my life.  It is, at its end, the power of singular things, of many things, seen and unseen, to take me to places I very rarely visit, places where my breath exists in its totality,  where my life exists in brief but spectacular seconds, and where my True Self exists, unfettered, for all of eternity.  

This is my paradise, my birthright, my home.