The mother of invention

Backpacks are everywhere and I for one will never go back to other purses except on special occasions. After experiencing sore shoulders over the years carrying a variety of conventional bags it's become a no brainer. Funny how real life brings you down to earth and I am increasingly hard pressed to see younger people without them.

They come in a variety of styles and can be as feminine or masculine as you like. The important thing is that necessity and practicality really do become  the mother of invention when you have to lug something around for hours.

Most of the time give me a backpack and a pair of ballet flats and I'm a happy girl:)

Venom

It would be fair to say that I still have a little bit of venom left in my system. This is the last of the clean up I have left because some of us who grew up largely repressing our innate transgender natures have frustration at a sometimes stupid and ignorant world. Therefore as relieved as I am these days I can tell I still have some poison to jettison from my stinger which has largely been poised to strike as I gained experience and saw the world as it truly is.

This last effort may take a while still but I am not worried because compared to my life before this is a small fragment of inconvenience. I write a lot about my disappointments with humanity here (and they are numerous) and yet there are so many wonderful and caring people out there. I just need to focus more on them.

Still, you would be ill advised to get on my wrong side ;)

Reckoning

I have lived in my quiet neighborhood for 11 years so I know what is common. The other day as I waited for the bus, a shirtless and disheveled young man maybe my son's age was walking screaming at the top of his lungs. Some of it was intelligible but much was not.

He slipped into my local corner grocer and suddenly came out again not long after and then sat on the bench near to where I was standing. He put his head between his legs and was so despondent it made your heart hurt. Not five minutes later the police came no doubt summoned by the grocery clerk because he had perhaps tried to steal food. Eventually he was goaded into the back of the squad car all the while crying and screaming.

That this is becoming more common occurence in North America and indeed the world is not surprising since our social fabric has been tearing at the seams for quite some time. We are invariably headed for a reckoning and a remaking of society in a dramatic fashion.

The age of Opinion

One of the most annoying things I can think of involves people speaking very authoritatively on something they know nothing about. They don't know the history, they haven't read anything about the topic and yet they express themselves with great confidence. This is like an open invitation to me to use basic critical thinking to dismantle their talking points.

Perhaps I didn't notice it as much when I was younger, but I have never seen so many ill informed people expound on topics without understanding them. That many gain acclaim doing so just confirms how easily many can be led by the nose.

Many people want their biases confirmed and they will seek out the specific echo chamber which magnifies them which is why these are such dangerous times. Even small cultural issues will be blown out of proportion because there is so much hatred focused in on them. No better example of this than how 1.4% of the population drives some right wingers to sheer insanity.

Perspective and social intelligence are in woefully short supply and we know what they say about opinions.

Transgender myths

 

Are you sleeping?

 

Take a pebble

Immense talent and compositional beauty...Emerson was a big influence on me...

Open

My upstairs neighbor has been beyond helpful to me. We met pre pandemic and my journey was furthered with her assistance during a time when I most needed to be listened to. She is 15 years my senior and in a great place in life and we also happen to share a birthday which I still see as prophetic that we should meet.

Life has a strange way of revealing itself to us and the last four years have seen the most advancement in the last leg of my path towards full self discovery. Transgender people have unique journeys towards harmony and balance that they experience at their own pace.

We remain open and the universe provides.

Jaded

Before I abandoned the idea (with his guidance) of pursuing HRT, Dr Morris gave me a reality check about the number of couples who had stayed together despite a spouse transitioning. That I was then more skeptical than I am now speaks to my built up belief over the years that this was rare and that many stayed our of fear of starting over or for economic factors. I used to scoff at what I saw as the breathtaking naivete of some transgender people who assumed everything was going to fall into place for them as if by magic. In fact I could have slapped some of them.

Today I am less jaded but maintain a healthy "mefiance" (en bon Français) while recognizing that there are people more capable of loving the full person than others. That is to say that some are less into the societal trappings and can look past them and into the soul.

I think having lost interest gives me more perspective but also more fortitude in knowing that not being who you are is definitely not the way to go.

What we think

There is an awful instinct especially in older transgender people that everyone else be made to feel comfortable first. After all, when you have spent much of your life rejecting your nature it's an easy trap to fall into and not be able to escape.

Even now despite moving to a new existence I will present as they expect at big family gatherings just to avoid awkwardness I know will be there. It won't come from our GenZ children but rather from my GenX siblings. That I have not changed this habit of mine speaks to my own trepidation but also to the fact that winning them over isn't important enough to me. Growing up with people that we aren't necessarily aligned with does not make that an important enough achievement to make the effort worthwhile.

That this will increasingly be a relic of the past for other transgender people is what is important. That and knowing it's only what we think that matters.

Dark

Freedom of speech today according to some seems to be about allowing hate. Since Elon Musk has taken over and converted Twitter to X, there has been an almost 200% increase in toxic posts. So clearly policing toxicity before wasn't such a bad thing if you valued decent and respectful discourse. Musk himself has shown he leans right if nothing else through his re posting of some of the more toxic pronouncements on his platform.

I am not on X because it would be pointless but there is a problem when so many are mired in a war of words which lead nowhere and were hateful messages are spread in hopes of fortifying mantras which are, more than anything else, about attacking certain groups.

It seems we have been cycling back to a pre world War II ambiance that only shows us how history constantly repeats itself and how build up to major cultural change basks in the worst kind of ugliness before we can push it back into the darkness where it belongs.