Zappa speaks

Prophetic and absolutely true. This was 37 years ago and things have only worsened as today the US flirts with theocracy...

Falling backwards

Self reliance is a good thing until it tips over into being mistrustful of others. In other words, we rely on ourselves because we are afraid to trust. I think of that exercise when you are invited to close your eyes, fall backwards and trust that the person will catch you. It is by no means innate instinct that we allow ourselves to do this.

Over my life I have gained a good deal of mistrustful impulses because keeping things to myself became mandatory. Often those defenses were proven correct because not everyone we meet has honorable intentions. However, I think the majority of people do except that they can see your reticence and not trust you in return. This needs to be worked back and I am learning later in life to be more open while still keeping my radar active; the one we develop as experiences teach us not to become targets or laughing stocks.

The person I have traditionally been most averse to is the impulsive and knee-jerk non-thinker; the more vapid, the more I was likely to dislike them. But even as they regularly fell into sinkholes there was something admirable in their tenacity to be so cavalier; to be so themselves.

Everyone has their own little demons and we need to show them we are not afraid to sometimes reveal our own by taking the risk of falling backwards.

We are always a work in progress.

The flat

I said the other day that I walk a lot and so the comfy flat is my best friend in the spring and summer. Amazon makes a great basic flat and my last pair got a lot of use. In fact they are still very much alive if a little weather beaten and I will wear them when dressing up is not an issue.

There is no need to break them in as they are immediately comfortable when you put them on. Black is my go to colour because they go with everything.

My block heel pumps occasionally get taken out but now I need to think where I will be going and how much walking is required which means common sense often dictates that I leave them behind.

The love equation

None of us get the love equation just right because imperfection coupled with imperfection yields more imperfection still. Some who are together occasionally dream of greener pastures while others alone yearn to be held and consoled from their loneliness. The rest of us might cobble together formulas which can work through extended periods and then suddenly face crises which will test their resilience.

Love doesn't offer guarantees and those of us looking to have psychological holes filled may be in for disappointment. Because what love offers is a chance to help someone else through life while they return their own less than perfect version of companionship.

If I sound cynical, I am not and have simply developed a realistic stance on an institution which has historically had the most myth surrounding it. This might be because to understand the true stakes, would mean thinking and rethinking and finallly deciding to not enter such a great mystery for fear of failing and feeling all that searing anguish afterwards.

Convention

If today society is more free of convention it can be said that it has come at the price of social manners. Public civility is at an all time low but not because everyone is that way. The problem is that the bar for the worst forms of it has been lowered.

I take the good with the bad here because the stiffer and more forced behavior of my time came with a healthy dose of hypocrisy. In other words, keep up appearances but do what you will in private.  It was perhaps go to church on Sunday to make up for all that sinning during the weekdays.

Conservatives bemoan this as moral decay but then people who didn't fit convention in the past simply moved underground. Human instincts don't change and are only as visible as the current tolerance level of the society we inhabit. But we play the game that people fundamentally morph into different creatures when it is really the social mores that vary over time.

If I prefer today it is because it is more devoid of deceat and, while the warts may be more evident, at least we can see things coming much more readily..

Jordy Check

RM Brown is sarcastic and irreverent to be sure but he invariably chooses the right targets :)

Psychology

Human psychology is fascinating and because we are all born clean slates, what you put into us as vessels will combine with our genetic predisposition to dramatically impact our lives. Often traumas will cause deep wounds which require healing but perhaps due to fear are addressed later in life or maybe not at all. All of us have blind spots regarding our own psychology and we often fail to recognize patterns of thinking which may be borne of childhood fears.

The predisposition for gender variance may already be present in childhood and what impacts it will determine how it progresses going forward. For example, if there is outright rejection it will perhaps go underground as it did for me. Conversely, the child may insist profusely irrespective of the frustration of flustered parents. I am speaking here primarily of prepubescent behavior because the post pubescent kind seems to be driven slightly differently.

If gender variant behavior has genetic roots, we have yet to find conclusive proof although the sheer numbers, even if small as a pro-rata of society, point towards that as a logical conclusion.

Post-pubescent origins seem to suggest more sexual motives; however, the argument could be made for denial playing a part in later recognition. Trying on your mother's bra or panty hose in your teens and being aroused can begin a pattern of behavior which could be argued to be rooted in predisposition simply because most young men would not find such experiences titillating enough to build into a lifelong pattern.

In the past we made distinctions between transvestism and transsexualism although on Benjamin's scale they seemed to meld as you went from type III into IV. Since no two people are alike and we are not all able to properly describe or even understand our own behavior, a clinician might have been hard pressed to make an accurate assessment.

My point here is that there may be genetic drivers for gender variance but not necessarily in all individuals; the particular combination of nature and nurture being decidedly unique in each case. But in the end no matter the source, complete self-acceptance becomes mandatory because suppression seems to produce far more adverse psychological effects.

Shame

CNN's recent town hall was actually a Trump rally.

Not only did the network give this criminal free air time to spew his lies, but they also filled the audience with his sycophants who laughed hysterically at his every pronouncement. Trump normally slovenly slurs through half intelligible speech waving those little hands in mock playing of an accordion which would be amusing if he did not have so much influence within his party.

I could not bear to watch the spectacle but those highlights on YouTube I did see were deeply embarrassing as poor Kaitlan Collins was faced with a barrage of untruths made more difficult to fact check by the cackling and applause from the audience.

Normally you would be able to provide a platform for a politician except that Trump defies all comparisons to a conventional one. He is more akin to an Al Capone character with a history of threatening judges and grabbing women by the genitals.

A more deplorable person has never run and won such a high office, which is why the rule book has been thrown in the dust bin and these horrible errors are made. Unsurprisingly, a sampling of the audience were questioned by the network and gave some answers that would be deemed hallucinatory by anyone who is up on the subject matter.

Shame on CNN.

Cautionary

If you were to choose one word to describe my journey as a trans person it would be cautionary. I was always careful in making sure I wasn't deceiving myself and read all the literature I could starting from a young age. Those of us from the pre-internet era did not have the resources available at our fingertips like we do today and even the idiom was not yet sufficiently developed which allowed us to better comprehend the distinction between birth sex and gender identity. Here my penchant for intellectualizing everything probably delayed me. My journey paralleled our advancement in knowledge but I did not begin to reach a comfort level until I was almost 50 and even now there is much clean up to be done.

They say that caution is the better part of valor and perhaps that's true but it can also be frustrating when the circumstances around you do not align with where you are in your advancement. Family, job situation and even friends can complicate and even delay our journeys of self discovery. Still, I have no regrets because each step was made with the discretion I felt was needed to keep the boat stable. When you have dependents who didn't ask to be born, you need to walk that much more deftly. 

I don't pretend to be able to advise others who take more bold steps at certain junctions but only caution that certain consequences may come of them. Nothing can be taken for granted because life offers us no guarantees.

All that being said, living in suppression of your identity is neither good for us nor for those who say they love us because that shadow isn't really an accurate picture. For some of us being trans became a prolonged purgatory from which there was no escape except it needn't have been that way.

Simply put, if your gender identity is tied to more than a costume you wear on occasion, you owe yourself the exploration.

The American experiment

Trump's conviction for sexual assault in the E Jean Carroll case will do nothing to impact his favorability rating among his low information base, but I do think independents who might have been tempted to hold their nose yet again, will now be less likely to vote for him.

This of course assumes that Jack Smith or Fani Willis will incredulously not obtain criminal convictions on what are essentially open and shut cases of election interference, insurrection planning and document stealing. This not to even mention Alvin Bragg's case in New York. If this had been any other defendant, the jail cell door would have long been closed behind them.

Trump has been exactly the cancer I had expected when I woke up in disbelief to that 2016 election surprise. It was like letting the fox loose in the hen house and then witness the ensuing carnage. The most base instincts of American society were given permission to be expressed out loud because suddenly a crass and racist dolt was occupying the president's chair. This helped reveal just how deep the cracks in the foundation actually ran which might yet turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.

If he is allowed, by some ghastly misfortune, to be president again what is left of the American experiment will almost certainly be extinguished and, by that point, perhaps deservedly so.

At this point I my life I am not surprised by the gullibility inherent in human nature, but am regrettably constantly being disappointed by it.

Goal

There is no cure for what ails human beings. We are over confident, guilt-ridden, overly curious, overly incurious, arrogant, timid, brazen and so much more. In other words, we are living contradictions of both lack and excess. Small wonder we are able to love someone else when we often deem ourselves irreparable creatures full of problems which need desperate attention.

I have observed society all my life. At first it was through the eyes of a shy child trying to fit in and now through the optics of someone who fights cynicism because they have seen behind the curtain and witnessed the inner workings of how everything truly operates.

At their root, people are afraid and insecure and we need reassurance that we matter and are worthy of love. It is the engine which drives our movements in life.

The goal is always honorable and devoid of malice even as our own lack of love of self threatens to derail us.