i’ll keep this short (since i’m actually working on tidying things up around here):
last year choir sang along with some songs that the bundles were recording, and now you can listen to them through the magic of c.d. or on white vinyl! i haven’t picked a favorite yet, but i’m really into “desert bundles” at the moment. …which you can conveniently listen to here!
photo (of some of us) by berd!
the first class i ever took in college was called “philosophy of women in world cultures,” a look at how women were reflected in religions and cultural histories throughout the world. mostly the class was me and some army wives, as this was san diego. the main text was the subordinated sex: a history of attitudes toward women, which was pretty interesting. we were also supposed to read the bible, which i didn’t… so i guess i’m making up for it now.
i’ve been a little into reclaiming the bible lately. i’m pretty much an agnostic pagan nutjob, but when the bible isn’t being used to hurt people or take money from folks, it can be pretty wise. i’m learning the way that all those strange numbers tell you where you are, which makes them a lot less confusing.
we went to church with my (lutheran) grandmother this sunday, and the sermon was about unconditional love, which is something i can get behind. at choir last week i went and talked to a man who had peeked his head in and listened for a while, usually i invite them in to sing with us. trying to figure out who we were, he asked “is this church?!” …i didn’t really know how to respond. for me, the love that we bring to choir *is* religion.
so, 1 Corinthians 12:14-26. it begins (14-17):
Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
it seems like this has been interpreted a lot around different religions being part of the church, but if you’re going to tell me that there’s nothing in the bible about the gays or what have you, i’m going to point you here. this is accepting everybody as they are, not kicking them out for being different than you are.
remember in april when i was freaking out about not being a part of my community? i still get frazzled about it, which is part of why i was excited about corinthians. above talks about folks not detaching, not isolating themselves for their differences, but look at what 21-26 says about taking care of the parts “that seem to be weaker:”
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
i’m excited here about a lot of things, about not throwing people out. about questioning our judgment of “honor” and what’s “unpresentable.” maybe the bible *does* want us to be socialist freaks, or maybe we should just take care of each other.
as the minister tried to get at unconditional love, something seemed to come up to the congregation about fear, fear of some kind of responsibility or catch to this unconditionality. this culture of fear is pervasive, and i think that the only way to work on it is by loving big. you wanna help?
i know that sometimes it seems like choir is the only thing i talk about, probably because it… is the only thing i talk about. i started grad school and quit my job (again!) since i last posted, but really.
election day marked a year of choir, in which it has grown exponentially in awesomeness and more than doubled in the amount of time we meet each week. yesterday was kimya’s birthday, and she was super sick. she requested that her friends post videos of themselves singing soft rock, but instead of soft rock i decided to have choir work on a response to this new song of hers… we recorded it and i made it into a moving picture. hooray!
this weekend is gender jam: olympia’s 2009 lad.i.y. and trans fest. i’m greatly anticipating many of the awesome workshops (nat and i are taking our little brother to chelsea baker’s “comics aren’t just for boys” workshop – it’s one of chelsea’s comics that closes out the video), and then sunday’s free choir practice is going to be part of gender jam as well, from four to six, in fertile ground guesthouse’s living room. it’d be a great first visit to choir, if you’ve been holding back – there should be lots of other new folks too, and we’re focusing on making sure that everybody is able to feel super welcome.
i am so proud of myself!
the night of great-grandma’s funeral, we drove from oly to des moines for a celebration at my grandmother’s house. on the way, nat and i got distracted by my father’s house (it’s right on the way, i couldn’t not stop by) and were gifted an abundance of fruit – canned peaches, dried apples, jam jam jam, amazing grapes (how sweet) and a big bag of apples. i spent a day soon after paring them, and when i was done i noticed… that some neighbors had a bunch of apples sitting in buckets with a sign that said, of course, “free apples.”
so i pared some more. and now there is so much applesauce.
i’ve been piecing together my canning knowledge with information from The Internets, and in one minute (yes, i will be taking a break from typing this), there will be a third jar of applesauce successfully canned!
and we’re at three. there are probably ten or so more to go, as there’s a giant bowl still of applesauce, and then the apple butter. for a total of six dollar’s worth of financial investment, and hecka more time – something that i have a fair amout of, for now. i got the jars from great-grandma, and the only thing that we purchased was the lids. whenever i hear them sucking in, actually sealing, i feel like jumping up and down.
i went to bed thinking about working on this
gathered scarf, and proceeded to have a dream where i was going to go on a road trip (from the pacific northwest to san diego, i think) and i wanted to bring that project along to start. i wonder how to interpret that one, considering the above and that i’ve been borrowing my grandparents’ car this past week and that i’ve been trying to figure out how to get to portland in a couple of weeks.
it’ll be, if i make it out there, my first trip to the zine symposium without cubbie – but it’ll also be a trip where i know more people than ever. so it seems like a positive thing to do, and like there are more people from olympia going this year. i think i’m feeling like i really should do something awesome because typically i would be at homoagogo right now, but i’ve been travel-hungry for the past while anyway, as i mentioned.
last weekend (not yesterday!) a friend and i stayed in a (western) yurt at grayland beach state park. it was a really wonderful trip that made our overnight stay seem longer than it was, which i think is the mark of a successful retreat. we saw a pinniped of some sort on the shore… i’m pretty sure he was munching on seaweed, although that might have been in my imagination. also we flew a kite! and toured the gray’s harbor lighthouse.
most importantly on the trip, we learned that we can take the bus there from olympia! having acquired bus schedules for the region, i am excited about the potential for cheap minivacations by bus.
i’ve been trying to start skating again – i’ve been pretty wheel-shy since i fractured my tailbone, mostly because my sense of balance is missing. i went out the other day, though, and managed to calm down after a little while (my knees, they stopped shaking!!) and even fell properly (while falling managed to twist so that i landed on my fleshy hip, rather than my not-fleshy tailbone). i’m hopeful that the skatey trend will continue, but still laugh at the thought of ever being able to even take part in the tiniest part of derby.
i’m still trying to figure out some broad-based what-do-i-want-to-do-where-do-i-want-to-go questions. all of my ideas at this point seem more romanticized than realistic – i need to find a way to balance those aspects and find a life that can sustain me. ideas?
portland lost (unless there was a sudden twist of fate in the last few minutes). there were three bunnies tonight (i’m just afraid that they’re going to declare them rodents at some point).
one of the things i miss most when i don’t have (access to) a car is the music part of it all. i ran out of this american life podcasts at work tonight (how will i stay awake without you, ira glass?!) and, all alone in my half of the building, danced around to gogol bordello. i’ve stated before and probably will again that they and the decemberists can lift me through most any trial.
it’s interesting. i love both of these bands, but neither of them is My Very Favorite. which might be why it works. kimya tmbg the magnetic fields the mountain goats have followed me up and down through so many times… while so far, the ‘cemberists and gogol help bring the downs up, because they don’t have any (so many, at least) major emotional attachments. never mind bands that have been loved and lost due to their memories, but we all have those (come down now, they’ll say).
gogol bordello is for dancing, standing waiting for the bus and being unable to refrain from moving my feet, in a flurry of cultural love and history. there’s a part of my heart that insists that these are my people, even though none of them actually share my czech culture (…that i know of). it’s an awesome thing to feel, though, because the nordic heritage i grew up with is awesome, but sometimes a bit culturally bland.
the decemberists fall more on that nordic side (of town), though, at least with the nautical emphasis. i’ve always been attracted to storytellers (and accordions), and love a song that i can get lost in. when you combine that with a sing-along-ability and that certain perfect amount of cleverer-than-thou-ness (because you know i was raised to believe it), they’re irresistible.
the hard thing about blasting your songs and speeding all the way home feeling infinite? is that the speeding actually makes the ending come sooner.
i have a challenge between making this blog [my] “family friendly” and making it… about much of my life. but i guess since folks wouldn’t know me very well at all without knowing this, i spend the vast majority of my social time engaged it trans community activism and/or at the “local queerlady-owned sexuality boutique” – “a sex store even your mother would love.”
partially i bring this up because they (the rubber rose, the store mentioned above), just hosted the annual traveling roadshow that is the sex worker’s art show. i’ve been four out of the last five years now, and this year i had the most fun (even though nomy lamm wasn’t on the tour), largely because carly and lea (see above queerladies) made it such an awesome environment.
i attribute the environment mostly to lea and carly, even though the show was at a different venue, because it had the same spirit of delight, enthusiasm, and wonder that makes all of the rubber rose’s events awesome. still, it was missing as much of a feeling of power (youtube, sound) as some of their past events. the show was at a different venue becauuuuse the rubber rose has permit Issues. due to their being an “adult business” apparently there is a whole laundry list of things that are not allowed in their performance space. which drives me crazy.
ah, well. if you haven’t missed it yet, go see the art show. and if you’re in the area, go give the rubber rose some money. because i can’t. because i still don’t have a job. awesome!! oh: and official no-go on amsterdam today. double-awesome.
my friend amy is not feeling super awesome today, so it is for her that i have uploaded this photo (hard work on this connection!) and set down this poem from it.
The Mirror PoemNo mirror’s big enough for Snuff
to see all Snuff at once.
He could try doing it in bits,
but that would take him months.
So I walk all around him
and tell him what I see.
And then, because he is my friend,
he does the same for me.
i’m not sure if this book is from when snuff was still an “imaginary friend” or not… that would make the meaning quite different. i think my favorite part of the image is snuffleupagus’ eyes in the bottom left of the right-hand page.
