Emily's last game

One of those scary atheletes...

To an 11

Being transgender involves a life full of second guessing yourself. There is almost no way around it. 

Was I read? Do I "pass"? (a term I hate) Is my voice ok? Should I medically transition? What will my family and friends think? 

The list goes on and on. 

It is the usual human existential angst ramped up to an 11 and no matter your age or life situation there will be plenty of obstacles in the way. 

I wish I could say there was a shortcut but there isn't. The only way is to slowly build a resolve made of steel that has you move forward because stagnating is the scarier of the two options. 

I struggled like everyone else existing within this tiny fraction of humanity but I wouldn't trade climbing uphill for anything. It made me stronger, more resilient and less easily derailed by people whose opinions don't matter. Sometimes that ends up including family and people you thought were your true friends. 

In the end no one can take care of you like yourself. You can hope to get assistance but you cannot count on it as a guarantee. 

I've learned a lot about humanity in my life; enough to know that the general public is far more short-sighted and far less intelligent than I thought. It's helped me to let many of them go and to choose more wisely. 

It's also taught me to be kinder to myself.

Justice

Belgium did the world a favour yesterday. 

By defeating the United States at the world cup they eliminated the possibility of having that team's victory be stained by corruption. It also gave the rest of us the chance to enjoy a little satisfaction in witnessing yet again that whatever Trump touches turns rancid. 

FIFA's nefarious shenanigans are well documented and seeing Infantino handing the criminal Trump a fake peace prize made us all more than a little queazy. It made the US elimination yesterday feel all the more just. 

The striker Balogun is of Nigerian extraction and holds 3 citizenships. He was born in the US which is what qualified him for the team. The irony is that the very same birthright citizenship granted by the 14th ammendment is what Trump wanted the supreme court to overturn. 

You can't make this stuff up.

"Help me"

In a sense, having all gender variant behaviour today fall under the banner of 'trans' is a bit unfortunate if only because we can lose track of where our focus should be. 

No one argues against diversity and letting people be who they are. What we want is an open society where people can be authentic which regretably is still an unattained target. 

We should want primarily to help those who need assistance. This means the focus should be on people who are struggling with identity issues who don't know or have access to how to address them. 

The other day at the thrift store my daughter saw a very confident gender variant person of approximately her age who wasn't disguising their birth sex. They were simply expressing themselves in a feminine manner including sporting traditional women's clothing. 

From her vantage point this young person didn't seem to need help. They were self-assured; certainly as much as anyone else in the store which I love to see as does my daughter.

I have a retired friend who I consider to be representative of the public. The nuance of the topic is lost on him because he hasn't had to think about it much over his life. I've had to patiently explain things to him which he then forgets. I find most people are like this and certainly my 90 year old mother (who is sympathetic) also is. 

Gender criticals pounce on this confusion on every case which suits their cause to point out the folly of playing with a rigid binary which only existed because it was so strictly enforced. 

However, I always go back to the most important and fundamental issue here which is: do you need help?

I certainly did. Now I'm just old and cranky.

A thousand words

The photo below should win a Pulitzer prize. 

It is of a young black woman in the subway surrounded by cowardly white nationalists sporting masks. It makes one think about the US south in the 1950's when black students were spit on for daring to sit at lunch counters reserved for whites. 

The current climate has encouraged all this ugliness such that on the nation's 250th birthday there are racists marching in Washington. The only solace being that at least they know they don't have the majority's backing; hence the masks. 

No doubt, however, that they have plenty of backers at home cheering them on. 

The racism problem in America never went away but was sufficiently swept under the rug until the timing for surfacing was once again right. 

It just took someone to give them permission.

Angine de Poitrine

Cultural divisiveness seems to power our world. It's to the point where facts will be ignored if they favor the side you hate. It's no longer about advancing ideas to help the most people but to make sure your team wins and to denigrate those who don't hold your views.

This is very destabilizing and has been encouraged by political leaders to control the masses. 

The musical duo Angine de Poitrine recently played a free show to over 150,000 people at the Montréal Jazz festival. I don't care for them that much plus being crammed in with that size of crowd on a hot night, doesn't do it for me. 

However it got me thinking about what draws so many people to this group and decided that a big part is their quirky and novel originality. They wear strange costumes and speak to each other in an alien language plus use invented hand gestures which their fans copy at their shows. 

Another aspect for me is that they are as apolitical as they come and thus can be adopted by anyone. You can be one of their groupies and be one of the ones who gets it. They don't come with a message other than to infect you with their grooves 

Sure, there are better musicians out there with more interesting compositions but they aren't as uniquely weird as this band from rural Quebec who has gone viral. In the era of AI they seem to have come out as a rebellious antidote to prepackaged pap from a computer. This despite the fact that their music relies heavily on rhythmic tempo and repetitive lines you might find in middle eastern music. 

There is something about this strange timeline which has people hungry for something that hasn't chosen a side; something that isn't branded yet by anyone and just wants you to vibrate to what they are presenting. 

Maybe that's where the appeal lies in this time of echo chambers. They can be for you who you want them to.

Right versus wrong

 

Solutions

There's a hair solution for everyone. 

Mine is growing in nicely but the crown area is thinner than I would like. Thus I have been watching videos featuring women with thinning hair or alopecia and seeing what they do. 

I now have the answer. 

Even as I continue to work on my scalp I will be ordering what is called a hair topper. It clips into your natural hair and mixes with the rest of it (assuming the colors match). Since I will be coloring my hair and the topper can also be colored (human hair), it will eventually and permanently eliminate my need for wigs. 

Many women who don't have hair loss issues wear toppers just to add volume to their own hair.

I have never colored my hair but I did my homework and will opt for demi permanent dye with no ammonia. After 30 shampoos it washes out naturally. 

I want to have relatively short hair (like my current wigs) because as women age it is more complementary plus it's easier to take care of.

I occurred to me yesterday that I have been transitioning since my mid 40's. It's just that it has been the most carefully crafted and hesitant of transitions. You could almost say I came to it kicking and screaming.

It will only have taken me almost 20 years :)

                           Topper

Happy 250

Happy 250th to my American friends who saw the current fiasco coming a mile away. Starting in 2016 they knew it would be bad even if they didn't imagine how much worse it would be. 

I want them to take solace in the reality that you can only properly repair things from scratch. You cannot do things half way which is why the damage needs to be felt by as many as possible. 

What arises from the solutions to this current mess can only be better. 

People who fall for cruelty will always form part of every society. Their personal troubles are strangely assuaged by seeing others suffer. As America continued its slide under the weight of oligarchy, many fell under the spell of a lazy populism from an idiot who promised to remove their ills. Regrettably many people are simple creatures who easily fall for slogans. 

The damage from this second term is much worse than the first and the cleanup will take decades. However, if at the other end comes a wholesale reform, future generations of US citizens will enjoy a system which renews the dream of a free and prosperous society for not just the tiny few.

Realizations

If we could get a handle on our psychology fully, most of our problems would fall away. 

Think about it. Much of our suffering comes at our own hands; what happened yesterday, the anxiety of what's coming tomorrow plus the magnification of our current challenges into major dramas. 

We are the cause. 

Solving this problem takes living. We begin to develop perspective over time and then we place the proper amounts of energy on things. No more, no less. 

One of our best tactics is to observe the lives of people who are challenged in a way we do not comprehend. We look at them and wonder how they do it day after day. 

Then we realize that it is because they must.

Frayed edges

At first blush the man sitting at the other side of the metro platform from me seems fine. Then suddenly he squawks like some prehistoric bird at the top of his lungs. 

No one reacts. 

We have a mental health epidemic in the world; one brought on by the insecurity and the broken human ties which are not visibly improving. 

When times are stable people feel reassured. When systems break down we end up with societal frayed edges. 

There is never a perfect era because when I was growing up diversity was an unthinkable thing. Conversely we had financial and societal harmony that kept more people from feeling despair. 

No such thing as perfect.