… standing in line at the local bagel shop, i noticed a woman with the most wonderful chromium blue nails… i complimented her on her nails and showed her my chromium orange/red nails… we talked nails for a bit… then we talked about how long we have lived in Beacon… me, for almost 20 years, she, since 2021 as a refugee from the pandemic… i was wearing one of my favorite dresses and an orange red lipstick to match my nails… i was in full fem mode… it was wonderful to have such a normal and natural feminine to feminine conversation…

From this morning’s walk… we are getting into predawn images illuminated by street lights and other light sources…

Today’s look…

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of profound love for the world and for women and men. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

What is required is an attentive response to something real and other than ourselves, of which we have only inklings at first, but which comes more and more into being through our response to it – if we are truly responsive to it. We nurture it into being; or not. In this it has something of the structure of love. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

… these two highlights appeared in my daily Readwise review… it is so interesting when two amazing authors writing from different perspectives arrive at the same clearing in the metaphorical woods… a sign we should pay close attention… love may not be all you need, but it is central to a deeply satisfying presence in the cosmos…

Fear of Dying

At a much more mundane level, is it not the fantasy of modern man – and woman – to defy time? Puritan diets, punitive exercise regimes, hair transplants, plastic surgery, cryogenics? An embargo on serious conversation about the fact that we are all born to die – quite soon? And that the meaning of life lies in its quality, not its quantity? Time and death are, it seems, our constant sources of anxiety and fear. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Death is among us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to lose sight of its power to enhance every moment. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… in recent years, and particularly since moving into feminine expression, i have become less afraid of death… even as i move closer to it…

… i am less worried about what lurks behind every anomolas change in my body…

… not really freaked out at all…

… can i attribute this, at least in part, to the completeness i am finding as i let my feminine blossom?…

… i think so…

something weird related to my account going on… @help

50 please vote cards down, 50 more to go…

The anonymous authors of Women and the New World suggest that wages for housework is “a proposal that takes us even further down the road of capitalism since it brings us into the marketplace and puts a price on activities which should fulfill human needs and not just economic independence for women.” (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

… how do we value work?… by the good it does and the bad it doesn’t do… how much of the work done under capitalism would be highly valued by this standard?…

Hmmmmmmm…

The true harbinger is not the man who offers a system when no one wants it, but rather the man who precipitates Chaos, its agent and incense-bearer. (Emil M. Cioran, Richard Howard (Translator), Eugene Thacker (Foreword), A Short History of Decay)

Hmmm…

Our passive acceptance of lies in public life, particularly via the mass media, upholds and perpetuates lying in our private lives. In our public life there would be nothing for tabloid journalism to expose if we lived our lives out in the open, committed to truth telling. Commitment to knowing love can protect us by keeping us wedded to a life of truth, willing to share ourselves openly and fully in both private and public life. (bell hooks, All About Love)

Anyone that is misguided enough to reject science must have a very limited imagination, as well as being blind to many beautiful truths, and will make many errors. But the same is true of anyone who accepts only science. For it can also become a tool that banishes wonder, stunts imagination and narrows down understanding, before closing the mind altogether. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

September 13, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

… what do false accusations of Haitian pet eating and the Wounded Knee Massacre have in common?…

Fueled on false stories of “savages” who were attacking white settlers, the inexperienced soldiers were the ones who pulled the triggers to kill more than 250 Lakotas on December 29, but the Wounded Knee Massacre started in Washington, D.C.

… politics is an amoral business… nobody should want to be a politician… anyone who does is suspect…

Kamala Harris receives the endorsement of Aliens from space…

Today’s look…

So, the strawberries are normal to large size. The blueberries are giants. And swee too!

… don’t know if i have shared this before… but it bears repeating even if i have…

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. (bell hooks, All About Love)

From Passive to Active Trans-feminine

Organisms don’t just passively wait, then, for a lucky accident or resign themselves to dying out, but actively remodel themselves in response to changes in their environment. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

… i read this today in the light of my own “remodeling,” which is a remodeling of my outward bodily landscape to align with my trans-feminine psychological landscape… my understanding of self internally, manifested to the surface of my body, with the knock on effect of changing the way i am interpreted by family, friends, acquaintances and strangers…

… what McGilchrist has in mind here is the ability of organisms to change their biological characteristics on the fly… he is also adamant that we have to consider all manifestations in the cosmos as interconnected and part of a cosmic flow…

… i wonder, can my trans-feminine evolution be viewed as a response to a changing environment?… can i consider it both a psychological and a physical evolution?…

… yes and yes…

… the basic reason is that my psychology is intimately bound with my biology… the two are not separable… and the changes brought about in my level of happiness or despair have to be both psychological and biological…

… what changes in environment might i be responding to?…

… the political environment became more toxically masculine than ever in the past decade… an enormous amount of stress has been put on my liberal stance… i have great worries that the tolerance i believe in will be displaced with intolerance… my response with trans-feminine presentation is an act of defiance that, in retrospect, seems necessary… challenge the intolerance with the thing it fears most…

… my very intolerant father died three years ago now, which is no small factor in the release of my feminine, something that disturbed him greatly even when it was only long hair…

… i am in a phase of life (retired) that means i don’t have to care what people think of me…

… i am in a phase of life where one either ossifies and withers, or one continues to evolve… i choose to evolve…

… because i am so much happier with my being in this world… feel so much more complete and whole in my being in this world… i believe there are biological changes going on in response to the changes in how i feel about myself…

This completely flips on its head the typical narrative we tell ourselves in the US about our massive levels of production and consumption, which are normally heralded as symbols of success and progress, signs that we are exceptional, blessed, doing things right. They are instead revealed as signs that something is very wrong, as indicators of tremendous sadness, disconnect, fear, lack of meaning. (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)

The real problem isn’t that it’s difficult to decide who owns culture; it’s that the very idea of ownership is the wrong model. The Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution supplies a plausible reason for creating ownership of words and ideas… But the arts progressed perfectly well in the world’s traditional cultures without these protections; and the traditional products and practices of a group—its songs and stories, even its secrets—are not best understood as its property, or made more useful by being tethered to their putative origins. (Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Lies That Bind)

Gratitude for my Feminine

Lucy Sante writing about her transition to womanhood…

I don’t hate myself anymore, am no longer apologetic for my very existence. I walk with pride. I feel exceptionally fortunate, grateful to whatever force cracked my egg before it was too late. I was saved from drowning. (Lucy Sante, I Heard Her Call My Name)

… i feel this sort of gratitude for being able to express myself femininely, though i don’t think i ever felt i was drowning… what i now recognize is that my self expression had been contained in a way that kept me from reaching a point of full happiness with who i was and what i was expressing… the joy that has found me since claiming the right to wear skirts, dresses, flowery things, lipstick, nail polish and all the other feminine things i am excitedly exploring, is enormous… i move through the world with a kind of confidence that i have had only intermittently in the past… the present confidence is much more continuous… i am grateful to a community that has embraced me enthusiastically in my new presentation… this has been decisive in solidifying the confidence i now have to be as i want to be…

Genderless

A body in immense pain can feel genderless, its status as a site of hurt more meaningful in the white-hot and blinding torrent of sensation brought on by a punch or kick or cut than its official designation as a body that is sexed. (Philippa Snow, Which as You Know Means Violence)

… this… that bodies have states of being that are genderless… when the pain is too much… when the pleasure is all consuming… when the world is incomprehensible… there are these places of intensity we occupy in a genderless way…

Cornucopia…

New additions to my mandala series…

Pet peeve…

The sticker on the right removes easily… the sticker on the left takes the skin of the apple with it. The left side sticker is applied by the grocery store. I hate them with a passion.

Particularly liked this one from this morning…