| ASO seeks transmen |
[16 Apr 2006|03:48pm] |
Hey--
My name's Riley, I'm an FTM in Cambridge MA and I'm currently working for
Cambridge Cares About AIDS, We are a harm reduction, peer support program for
gay, bisexual, queer, trans (FTM), questioning, and "gay for pay" men in the
Boston
area. We offer outreach, HIV testing, one-on-one support (non-clinical),
referrals to
treatment or healthcare needs, and safer sex materials.
We're putting together a risk assessment survey regarding HIV/AIDS, safer sex
and
drug/alcohol use, and I am hoping to find some transmen in the Boston area who
might want to particiate. If you do, you get $25 and a safer sex kit (ooh!)
The whole
thing is totally confidential and anonymous, and will take abt an hour.
We're also looking to put together a focus group in a few weeks, which we can
talk
more abt if you're interested in doing the survey.
If yr in Boston or the Boston area and would be interested, please contact me at
rmacleod@hds.harvard.edu AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Also, if you know anyone who
might be interested, PLEASE send them my way. This is a great opportunity to
voice
our concerns about outreach and medical needs in the Boston area and the
dialogue
with service providers about being more trans-inclusive and trans positive.
Thanks so much for you help,
Riley
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[17 Sep 2005|11:07pm] |
I got hit by a car. I'm OK but it hurts a lot.
I ride my bike around Boston and it feels badass and good and free.
Freedom is something I'm thinking a lot about.
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| oh the continued threat of beatings |
[28 Jul 2005|12:59am] |
So walking home tonight after visiting my friend Emily. There's a big park by my house, a football field and some basketball courts and a school, and now that it's summer kids hang there a lot. Which I would do if I were a kid. Which I am. But anyway-- Walking down the street I saw a group of kids (btw kids is my generic term for anyone under 30) standing under a streetlight way across the park. But as I got to my door a couple of them peeled across and headed toward me. I got up to my steps and they said "Hey, come here."
I said, "No." And fumbled with my keys. And turned to look at them and one of them was putting on a face mask.
Yes, a fucking face mask. And I thought "oh fuck."
And the kid in the mask said "What makes you think we won't come up there?"
And I said "Please don't," very politely I felt, and of course at this point I'm trying to jam my key in the lock upside down, and I have 10,000 keys anyway, and I'm thinking how stupid it is to be fucking with my locks but what else should I do?
The kid asks "Do you know Nino?" and I say "no" and he asks a couple more times, but I get the door open and leap in and slam it, and one of them mutters "bitch ass nigger" and I guess they go away because I run like fuck upstairs and slam the door and wake up my roommate to perseverate about it and if they'll come up here and what the fuck they're doing.
They're still out there, but I didn't want to call the cops 'cuz I don't want to be that guy, though a cop totally drove down the street a little while ago. So of course they hid and then came back. So I guess they're just sitting in park waiting for whoever they're waiting for, right? Mostly I can't imagine what would make it worth coming up here for, though now every sound I hear I'm like freaking out but I SO don't want to call the cops, it's just so stupid and why cause any more shit. Like whatever they're gonna get busted for it going to be made so much worse by B&E and assault, and I guess they believe me about not knowing who they want, right? I'm imagining it's some sort of drug thing, 'cuz I think people deal near here.
This is so stupid. This shit never happened to me in NYC besides that one time a homeless kid stole my breakfast, and that other time I saw a guy run up and punch one of the waiters from the Italian restaurant on 10th Street.
So I guess I'll just here like a scared white boy all night long. The threat of two beatings in one week. I want my mohawk back. No one fucked with me before I was emo.
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[27 Jul 2005|08:38pm] |
Just watched this anarchist documentary, "The 4th World War," all about protests all over against globalization. There's all of our silly American black bloc kids and that usual stuff, but also people in Mexico and South Africa and Argentina and South Korea and Palestine and Italy and everything. It's really cool to me to see old people and young kids at protests, reminds me that it's not just a little white boy thing to do for kicks.
Anyway there's a part about the Zapitistas in Mexico and a bunch of them go and take over a military outpost. All these men and women in bandanas march out to this base and yell and sing and dance around and throw mud. And you can see the army guys, kids really, trying so hard to be stoic and authoritarian, with mud all over them, and all these people singing folk songs. Eventually the army gives up the outpost.
I think you see this kind of footage all the time: the people throw rocks and dirt, and dance and sing, and the army has guns but it always seems like they REALLY don't want to use them, but eventually they do. The way all the singing goes silent when the guns start up, and all the dancing stops and everyone starts to run. It's so wacky. My sister and I used to have this joke that one day we'd wind up on opposite sides of a line, but the longer I live the more scared I am that it's true. But it's like, the army people and the cops never REALLY want to kill anyone. People are being wild and things get crazy and sooner or later someone snaps and then shit starts to happen and doesn't stop. The day my sister and I wind up on opposite sides, we'll both be stuck in the same system that's rolling over everyone. Then again, I wonder why people are so shocked when the violence starts up: you think you can knock over the barricade in Quebec City and *not* get the line of riot cops coming at you? But no one wants it, really. The cops and the army are people just like everyone else.
I thought about this a lot yesterday when a mess of us drove to the D.O.C. to try to talk to the Commissioner. It's also the HQ of the army national guard so there's soldiers all over and a checkpoint and stuff. The boy got real nervous and was talking about how crazy it was, and I couldn't help thinking that I know these kids who have to stand here all day, how boring it is, how they don't know what they're looking for, how they take that uniform off and they're just people. So they don't scare me so much. But one day they will. When they're shooting people in Iraq and dragging my sister or her husband or my friends with them they will. When they come back fucked up from George Bush's war, when my sister comes back a totally different person and her husband comes back a stranger from the cities, then they'll scare the shit out of me. And somehow this war is for me, for my City all those years ago. I don't understand it, really. I remember my mom made me come home that weekend, and I was walking uptown 'cuz the subways were fucked up. And on every available surface there were posters for people missing people, and people on corners and church steps thrusting photographs at me asking "Have you seen them?" I got halfway to Grand Central and started to bawl my eyes out. I stopped and called my mom and told her I couldn't come, that I couldn't leave my City like this. She freaked out of course, and made me do it, and in the suburbs everything was normal or looked normal at least. And now my sister and my friends are going to go out and make more people die, and make more people make more signs looking for loved ones. And NO ONE wants it, not a single flesh-and-blood human being could possibly want these things. But they go on.
I wish it were easy enough to just point to the bad guy like in superhero films, say "that one, he's evil" and we could be done with it. But it's not like that. The thing that makes war can't be as small as one person. But what else could it be? Even George Bush, I want to believe he's caught in it, thinks it's the right thing to do, but how can he BELIEVE it? How could any of his people believe it? The PEOPLE don't believe it, but we're the ones who get our streets barricaded, who get the people we know sent away, who get sent away, who die. And we send out people in the millions and take the streets and talk about our big victory, and then the war keeps going. Where does it start from? Where does it stop?
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| "may we exist in muddy water with purity like the lotus" |
[10 Jul 2005|11:16pm] |
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mood |
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 depressed |
] |
Feeling kinda down these last couple days, lots of stuff I guess... A friend of mine apparently had a baby, which just died. The two prisoners I've been writing to are full of so much pain and that's hard to deal with. So many of my friends have suddenly broken up with their SOs and our lives of full of sudden crying and questions. I was talking to the boy, who's away this week, about how maybe getting in with everyone's pain is an extention of the vows I took soon to be a year ago, and he told me that "White People" practicing Buddhism is racist... which goes up on the list of Insensitive Shit to Say with my dad telling me when a friend of mine died of aids, "Well you knew it was coming." So we argued and made up but it's still sad as well as maybe being true, I am more than willing to concede that there is rampant racism is the sangha and there are implications to Buddhism's transmission all over the world... but the thought that I don't have a right to my practice because I'm white is sickening. Stopped smoking for 13 days before having 3 cigs last night at a party, dammit, so I feel like a big ole failure though I haven't given up! So I'm just feeling distant from things that feel nice, surrounded by my own pain and that of other people, and just sitting in the midst of that but it's not doing much for my work getting done, lay on the couch all day with my Spanish book open staring at the ceiling... I'm sure it'll pass, 'cuz these sorts of things always do, but... blah. That's all.
I don't feel too bad about being a white man, though. It wasn't an easy place to get to. I wonder if transpeople can count as capital-W White?
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| cuz i'm tired of talking today |
[09 Jul 2005|07:42pm] |
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mood |
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vast is the robe of liberation |
] |
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music |
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Billy Bragg, "Northern Industrial Town" |
] |
I Don't Want Solidarity If It Means Holding Hands With You
---Defiance Ohio
(hear it for free at http://defianceohio.terrorware.com/audio.php#audio)
let's stop this talk of privilege because the songs that we sing are as much a product of our privilege as the clothes on my back and the phone call i made to my mom last night. let's stop this talk of action because action comes easy it's the moments just before that are hard, when i've got to get my voice and my fist on the same page as my heart. let's stop this talk of them because the things we find deplorable in politicians, ceos and cops are the same things that will tear ourselves apart. and let's stop this talk of words because words like dishonesty selfishness and greed aren't as distance to us as we'd like to believe.
so please, the next time you're smashing the state, don't go breaking my heart. because i know that when we pick up the pieces, the only thing left will be the same empty rubble that's made up every revolution that i've ever known to make me believe and lose faith in humanity in the same empty breath of hot air.
they say that the beauty's in the streets. but when i look around, it seems more like defeat. i'm afraid that this fight that we're all caught up in will make us the same as that which we oppose.
so please, the next time you're smashing the state, don't go breaking my heart. but i know that we can pick up the pieces and build something new, something different. that's not like every revolution that i've ever known that can make me believe and have faith in humanity and we'll all breath a breath of fresh air.
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[08 Jun 2005|10:07pm] |
It's raining after a day of serious heat. The sudden intensity of wild summer rain. Very nice, even for Boston.
I spent all day outside today. Had to work (WTF, right? It's way harder to not work that I ever figured, a fact which I am surprised and grateful to learn) and then sat shirtless in the park writing letters to some queer prisoners from a list the boy gave me. It's so sad to think of these kids locked up, and maybe sadder my own suspicions and fears and judgments. So we'll see about that. I also found it really hard to say anything about myself that didn't feel like gloating. "I like to snowboard and go to punk shows." Things I can do because I can go outside. It felt incredible to sit in the park with the sun all over me and think of these kids, my age or younger, living in a concrete box.
Later spent the day with the boy and the baby he watches. Weird, man. I haven't been around really little kids in a long time. This boy is like... a wee person. He kept looking at me and smiling and reaching for my cup of coffee, and I just thought "you're a little person. holy crap." I think we don't remember being that young because our self-esteem would go through the roof. Think about it: if you remembered learning to walk, talk and dress yourself, you'd be so fucking proud you'd never do anything for the rest of your life. You'd just walk around thinking "look what I can do!"
The boy and I of course wandered Davis Square with our arms around each other wiseassing. "Oh darling, you've made me the happiest husband in the world! Can we move to Provincetown and own three cars and a golden lab?" "Yes of course, dear, of course!"
(Actually that was mostly me. I'm a real jerk.)
Otherwise thinking about... everything. Never done thinking these days. Reading "The Long Loneliness" by Dorothy Day and thinking so much about voluntary poverty and what now feels like the sinfulness of spending money on school, compounded with the threat of then becoming a wage slave to pay the loans off, buying a lot of stuff to unwind and reassert my sense of agency, and from there it's a hop-skip-and-jump to locking my doors and refusing to give change to homeless people. It all seems very minor but feels very serious to me. Dorothy Day (who started the Catholic Workers, if you all don't know) also writes about community and people doing for each other so much of the charitable work that the state does for them, and what does it mean to live in community? The idea excites me a lot, and I'd love to get some kids together from my Zen center and try it out. Of course it's much harder in NYC, and that makes me sad, because these things feel so important to me but I am still trying to discover how to make them fit in my life. Which is maybe why I snarked so hard at Tom this weekend. I feel like we must must MUST be in community with each other, above and beyond everything, maybe even families, maybe even couples. Dorothy Day writes about living with the Workers while also having a daughter, and how she had to leave her husband because he wouldn't let her become a Catholic, and I think... to answer Tom's LJ question, no it isn't radical to have babies. Anything that takes us away from the work we do with each other is maybe no good.
Of course taking care of babies is work for each other too, but babies feel like property to me, the way that your life is rearranged when you have/live with kids... Your community shrinks to three people and that's scary and seems to me to be irresponsible. And of course I'm not like the most community-oriented guy, I'm not out there inviting the homeless kids into my house. But... I don't know. I'm learning. I'm learning a lot. And it feels important. Really, really important.
I need to just go to the monastery and be done with it.
Anyway, the day ended with taking down another AV event, and I felt very butch hauling speakers back and forth, even though I'm too short to pull them down and have to balance them on my head for a little bit, which seems like an exercise in the potential for death. And I have to get up at 6a tomorrow to work commencement. Right on.
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| "so crazy it just might work, and then we'll quit our jobs" |
[31 May 2005|11:48pm] |
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Done with my first year of grad school.
Trying to do some research through Google with the search term "intentional unemployment" and most of what comes up is about how to get out of paying child support. Weird. I'm thinking about not working for the month of June. I have a little bit of money, not much but enough to eat and pay the rent and heat. Thinking about this because I freak out so much about working and not working and buying things. So much of my identity is tied up in employability, and I'm just sick of placing so much emphasis on something so false and silly.
So I thought it might be interesting to take a specific amount of time and intentionally try *NOT* to work. It's actually harder than I thought, since I'm signed up to work commencement and have two jobs here I'm bound to. But I wanted to see what it's like to spend some time not selling my time for money, to get a chance to look at what I really do and how to deal with the crazy feelings that come up in me at the words "not working." It's a terribly priveledged space to be in, which I need to keep in mind. Already I feel like shit about it, but I'm kind of interested in seeing where it goes.
So what would I do with myself? Work on my novel-- thinking of putting it out as a 'zine (I know, I know) but I don't know how to do the layout. Play my guitar. Play with Seamus til she isn't around anymore. Try to do some house stuff since my roomate is gone and all the furniture went with him-- retile the bathroom floor, maybe get permission to paint. Quit smoking and ride my bike more. Find out about all this Boston stuff. Meet people. READ (get a fucking public library card.) I don't know. I had decided that since I wasn't working I need to spend five hours a day (roughly the amount of time I work) out of the house. Being out in the world will be my job. Luckily I'm politically committed to loitering, so this might work out.
And then probably move to NY on July 1 and ruin my relationship with the boy forever. I was writing a guitar song about it but it wound up being about waiting an hour at Downtown Crossing last night when I decided I needed to see him at midnight (this happens a lot, these frantic train runs)... Thankfully in emo you don't have to rhyme.
Also these last two shots of T have hurt like FUCK. I almost injected into my ass today. I like thinking it's 'cuz my thighs are all muscled, but it's not.
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| tell me what you think please!! |
[15 May 2005|05:18pm] |
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Hey all. Cut below is the first chapter of my novel rewriting the life of the buddha as a punk. I feel funny about how it's going. Can someone comment on the tone, if it's... somehow wrong?
( Chapter One )
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| anything at all |
[02 May 2005|08:45am] |
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mood |
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 mmm... emo.... |
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music |
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The Honorary Title, "Reason to Celebrate" |
] |
Quite the weekend on this end. Went to NY with the boy, much fun. Telling stories about every place we walked past, which quickly degenerated into "I ate here once;" "Once I saw a dog here." Nevertheless something explodes hard in my chest to walk around the wet, dirty streets of my city, so native that looking at the landscape is like the accompaniment of my own thoughts, hardly noticed. We went to the Trans Prom at the Center and saw a lot of friends, which was nice.
Saturday we drove to Amherst and saw Greenday! Not as hardcore as the other shows I've been to. I think the scene can be exemplified by the fact that tons of kids tried to crowdsurf when no one was watching and tried to mosh when the pit wasn't created (which meant tall kids pummelling me with their knees and elbows until I smashed into them.) Greenday was good, of course, and I do really dig their new album though I wonder what it means for kids to gather around them singing about teen angst and rebellion when they are mostly jocks in white hats. Then again no one has the market on teen angst, so who am I to say? It's not as organic as "real" punk but it still has the heat of other bodies and that desperate frothing toward some kind of wild conclusion, that unity between the music and the crowd and the band that leaves you thinking so much more is possible somehow than the life you spend sitting in your desk chair. Or maybe that's just me.
Last night the boy showed up to return my novel (whew) and threw rocks at my window til I let him in. And we had hot crazy sex. And now it's sunny and I'm getting ready to go to work and listening to The Honorary Title. They have this photo on their PureVolume site that looks so urban, and their music sounds so adult that it makes me feel bad about my vocabulary. I wanna write like an adult who lives in Brooklyn. Let's start ennumerating what's wrong with that sentence... Anyway if you ever go to their site, "Reason to Celebrate" is a sweet song. I will stop writing before this goes the route of everything else.
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[18 Apr 2005|11:03pm] |
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mood |
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 inhaler! |
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music |
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Rise Against, "Paper Wings" |
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"Suffering from something we're not sure of
In a world there is no cure for
These lives we live test negative for happiness
Flat line, no pulse, but eyes open
Single file like soldiers on a mission
If there's no war outside our heads
Why are we losing?
I don't ask for much
The truth be told I'd settle
for a life less frightening, a life less frightening
I don't ask for much
The truth be told I'd settle
for a life less frightening, a life less frightening
Hang me out to dry I'm soaking
With the sense of knowing
What's gone wrong but doing nothing I still run
Time again I have found myself stuttering
Foundations pulled out from under me
This breath is wasted on them all
Will someone answer me?"
"Life Less Frightening," Rise Against, from their new and spectacular album, "Siren Song of the Counter Culture." Amazing. Go hear it.
Saw Against Me on Sunday at Northeastern. Awesome. They weren't letting in high school kids for no good reason, but a bunch of them snuck up in the service elevator, which I thought rocked. Good show, though middle of the day and short. No moshing but some jumping and pressing around. Wore the shit out of myself during "Pints of Guinness." G-d I love punk rock.
Spent the whole weekend doing parties, Friday night at the boy's house. Bands in the basement and lots of kids to talk to, lots of smoking and the night ending with us all in a pile on the floor making up songs about the night we'd had. Met a lot of cool guys in bands who shared stories about touring with Anti-Flag and seeing Strike Anywhere at Gilman Street, just coolness all over. (And some interesting polyamory questions for Tom's and my show, which we should talk about, Tom.) I just love kids, man, and everyone hanging out, and that excellent party-space. And even the next morning sitting amidst the old cans and cigarette butts and sun on the boy's front steps (where I found a T pass and a package of Drum and papers which has nearly burned my face off as I try to roll my own cigs... Health reasons won't make me stop smoking, but public embarrassment totally will.) The boy inside making vegan muffins and just... loving that left-over party feeling, and the awkwardness of responsibilities starting up again after a night where nothing's important but contact and the present. All the stories from these kids make me want to drop out of everything and just *be*, just hang out and make art and meet people and make life. Same old questions with school leaving me no time to think about them.
So as you can guess by the fact that I'm updating, I have a paper to write. *sigh* Stupid school. Chugging along at any rate, by which I mean I have almost a page. Fucking word count. Anyway I've got coffee and cigarettes and am hyped up on the new inhaler the doctor gave me today (along with a blood test for ferret allergy, which we were both surprised to find existed... I am curious as to how they test my blood for ferret.) All I need now is to actually WORK. Arg...
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| holy fuck |
[04 Apr 2005|12:35am] |
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mood |
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 astounded |
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music |
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Against Me, "Baby I'm an Anarchist" |
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The most interesting thing you can know about me right now is that I'm listening to Against Me, "Reinventing Axl Rose," and crying through most of it.
You go hear this album right now. And kick yourself for having not heard it sooner.
Sample lyrics for your astonishment and admiration, from "I Still Love You Julie":
"Last night,
A room full, drunk,
Sang along to the songs I never had
The courage to write.
Given the chance
I'd stay in this chorus forever,
Where everything ugly in this world
Is sadly beautiful
In our desperate memories.
No, we're not
Gonna call everyone on their shit tonight,
Even though the half of you won't even smile
The next time we pass on the street.
Maybe somehow
This scam will still save us all..."
In other news, the world is crazy and I want no part of it. The boy has a quote on his wall that says in part something along the lines of "we don't want a piece of the pie because we know the pie is rotten." Choices abound, and I'm just too afraid to choose one of them.
Not working on my paper. Fuck my paper.
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[13 Mar 2005|11:57pm] |
Went to see Black 47 tonight, my favorite band ever. They're a bit creaky in their older age, but still rocking. All my Harvard friends suck and so no one came. But I had a good time jumping around near some Irish-dancing lesbians, so that was OK.
The cool part is that Black 47 has been the favorite band of my sister and I since we were in h.s. She didn't come 'cuz
a) she's a jerk
b) she's in the Army and can't get away too much.
So the really cool part is that I went up to the lead singer after the show (he complimented me on my blue hair) and asked him if he would ring her up on my cell phone. And he said yes. And so I called her, waking her up, and once sure she was mostly conscious, handed over the phone.
So I think this is the coolest thing ever. She was less impressed because, like I said, she's a jerk. But I still think it rocks.
I'm gonna drop out of school and do nothing but go to punk shows forever.
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| 40 shades of blue |
[13 Mar 2005|05:46am] |
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mood |
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 accomplished |
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It's 5.46 in the morning. The sky is grey and looks brilliant with the snow, that winter faded color that makes a lot of space in everything. I'm exhausted, having just come back from a Div School pseudo-frat party where I helped my team win at "Flip Cup" (basically what it sounds like) and was involved in some very wet keg stands.
But I had to share this because this moment will never be as perfect again:
I dyed my hair blue today, or the top of the faux-hawk at least (the faux-hawk is poser hair, thus the color.) I bleached it *all day* and it was still yellow, and the last time I dyed my hair blue from yellow it turned green (who remembers their high school color wheel, eh?) So I was really nervous and even did a spot test, where some of it turned blue and some of it turned green. I didn't want to leave the top bleached 'cuz it was a bit too Backstreet Boy, so I got home tonight and, sufficently slightly drunk, decided to go for it. And spent about an hour desperately trying to keep the bathroom fixures from turning blue, to a great deal of success, thank you Soft Scrub!!
Anyway, I wanted to write because tomorrow, in true Zen fashion, the color will start fading, but right now, my hair is the most beautiful shade of blue I have seen in my whole fucking life. I washed it out and was moving in slow motion toward the mirror preparing myself for good old chlorine green. And got instead this intense and amazing deep and brilliant dark tourqoise type blue. It's incredible. I'm so fucking happy with it. There's no way I'm going to be able to keep it from turning green, but at least til Tuesday, I will have amazing fucking hair.
Went on a date on Friday. It rocked. Life is fucking sweet.
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| "i've gone looking for that feeling everywhere" |
[03 Mar 2005|10:48pm] |
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mood |
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sore |
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music |
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Shelter, "Letter to a Friend" |
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So I'd actually kind of decided that I wasn't going to do these livejournal posts that were journal-y anymore, because it felt weird to talk about my life to people in that psuedo-intimate way. But I wanted to write this down someplace because I spent all day trying to talk to people at school about it and realizing how silly it was.
I went to see Flogging Molly and Hot Water Music last night at Avalon, a very big club with a tragically inefficent coat check. I didn't know Flogging Molly or Hot Water Music that well but I've been killing to go to a show. I went with a girl I know from Davis Square, who very kindly followed me into the crowd, where we found ourselves at the edge of the mosh pit.
So since I spent 20 years as a girl locked up in my room hating myself, I never did this shit. I wasn't about to do anything that required relying on my body when I was younger. But this time around, man, something about all that movement and anger just called to me. I hung out on the outside shoving other kids back in until someone threw me in with them. At which point I bounced off a giant kid and went flying out again. So someone shoved me back in. And I whacked into another kid, gave as good as I got, and went flying out the other side.
(For those of you who don't know me, I'm a small guy. I'm five two on a good day and ninety pounds when wet and holding a bowling ball. And the kids in there are BIG guys. But us little fellahs are always the hardest to take down. ;-) )
So now it's impossible for me to put into words the experience I had in this fucking pit, and it makes me sound like a sixteen year old boy to talk about it, which I guess I am. But there's all these people you don't know at all, and it's all about passing some message from the music to the crowd to their body to yours... And all these people on the edge of the pit making sure no one falls out. And when you fall down everyone stops jumping until you've been helped back up, and if they hit you too hard, the first thing they do is clap you on the shoulders and ask if you're ok. And if you say "yes," they shoulder-butt you in the stomach. (I got punched in the stomach an inordinate amount. A stomach full of cigarettes and beer, I might add, which does not feel so nice.)
Some girl I would never have spoken to in my life held me up while I tied my shoes. And this tall bruiser in a sweater was in every pit I was in, grabbing kids who fell and keeping people inside. I thought he was security until I saw him later and I realized he was just standing there helping everyone 'cuz he was big enough to.
It was just... fucking mindblowing to me, this community who are a community for the four hours you're at the show. And me in the middle of all these people, being slammed from body to body, having to exert effort and concentration to keep my boots on the concrete, and that sudden rush of going from one end of the room to the other with no control over it and yet having all this control over my body and what I can choose to do with it to the bodies of other people. Having this permission to be intimate with the bodies of strangers, knowing it's OK to just throw my whole weight against them. The way another guy turns to look at me and grins and claps me on the back before he's flying against me, and me slamming back before we're both taken down by a kid leaping in out of nowhere, tumbling against the people on the edge and being shoved back in.
This is all overblown and poetic and hopelessly inadequate, but I think I've found my new fucking religion, man. Waking up today and hurting all over, and having the weirdest energy and the need to try to tell people, to try to connect with the people at school the way I connected with these people who a half hour after the show ended were cutting me in the coatcheck line. And getting nothing from the people around me, all this mental chatter, and me playfully slamming into all my friends in the library just fishing for that sense of connection and urgency again.
The only part that sucks is I lost my fucking watch in there. My sister bought me the watch and I just bloody loved it, man. Spent a while combing the floor after the show ended, but since the watch was black leather I kept thinking it was crushed cans of Guiness. Well, I hope if someone found it they're enjoying it.
So enough of this. I got permission to rewrite the life of the Buddha as a punk rock kid for a final project in Buddhist Ministry, and after this show I have enough shit to fill the fucking book, y'know. It beats words to me. The quote which is the title of this entry is from Denis Johnson's "Jesus' Son," where the main character is describing the way it felt to hear a woman scream after learning her family died in a car wreck. I guess I feel that way right now. 'Cuz that feeling is not in doing exegesis on the Vissudhimagga.
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| requisite lyric post |
[24 Feb 2005|11:04pm] |
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mood |
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is lame a mood? |
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music |
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uum... well... |
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You probably just have to hear the song (I found it on Kazaa) because otherwise these types of posts, though popular, are meaningless. Straylight Run, "It's For the Best." You love them because they have the rhythms of Taking Back Sunday without the discordant screaming. But you miss the screaming, yes you do.
And it takes more time than I've ever had,
drains the life from me, makes me want to forget.
As young as I was, I felt older back then,
more disciplined, stronger and certain.
But I was scared to death of eternity,
I was saved by grace but destroyed by naivety,
and I lied to myself and said it was for the best.
So now faith is replaced with a logic so cold,
I've disregarded what I was now that I'm older.
And I know much more than I did back then,
but the more I learn the more I can't understand.
And I've become content with this life that I lead,
where I drink too much and don't believe in much of anything.
And I lie to myself, and say it's for the best.
We're moving forward but holding ourselves back,
and we're waiting on something that will never come
We're moving forward but holding ourselves back,
and we're waiting on something that will never come
(And I lie to myself, and say it's for the best)
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| dignity and money |
[24 Feb 2005|06:39pm] |
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mood |
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 anxious |
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music |
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Blink 182, "Wasting my Time" |
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And it's another bitch-fest!
Things got better since my last bitching (thanks for all your kind words). I did some sitting and tried really hard to just be here and work hard. Learned a lot of interesting things about time and how we think about it and how we use it. I also volunteered to give a dharma talk in my ministry class next week. This is a side effect of a long-term illness where I raise my hand because no one else does. Getting permission to give a dharma talk at my sangha involves a really long process, so I feel utterly unworthy and more than a little nervous. My roommates told me I'd be good at giving sermons since I turn everything into a story anyway. We'll see how it goes.
But THIS particular bitch is about money. I did the math wrong on my bank account (the math you do in your head to justify spending money without actually *looking* at the account, because if you look at it you know the truth) and I have less than $90 to my name and just wrote a $100 check to the zen center. I'll get paid tomorrow though, my whopping $50 a week. Periodically I have these "oh fuck" moments financially, especially around the end of the month. My dad helps pay my rent and has been giving me a little extra because I'm working less than I was in New York. This comforted me because I realized this month is short, but then I realized that I'll pay the heating bill next month and be flat out again.
I don't really spend the money on anything, and in fact justify every purchase I make and, once made, regret it. Despite all my Zen breaking-apart-identity stuff, I put a lot of my identity stakes on working. I always have to work and work hard and be that age-old myth of self-sufficent (good old Max Weber Protestant work ethic for you there). So these moments drive me not only to financial panic but existential crisis. Because I SHOULD be self-sufficent. I SHOULD be able to support myself. If I don't have a job then I'm not trying hard enough, and if I think I'm trying hard enough than it means I'm just not fucking good enough. And I go into this freaking-out-can't-sleep panic panic panic, which blows over and then resurfaces.
Since grad school, since I'm making less money, these moments come more frequently. And I HATE it. I hate calling my dad for money, and trying to explain why, and then having to do it again. I've got some change I can cash and some stuff I can sell and am applying for a summer job right now, but it still sucks. I feel extra-competitive because my sister can support herself (granted she's in the Army) and so why can't I? And when I do I can never get ahead and be safe with it, you know? And of course the whole point of money is that it ebbs and flows, and that you can never really store it up, but still. Still still still. I hate how it feels to not be able to make a life. I hate the cycle and its cyclical nature, taking the shit away and bringing it back. And being all "Zen" and knowing that it's part of life, that these moments are just as much my life as the moments when I work hard and feel good about it, but I don't know how to internalize that and accept it. Radical acceptance of all that panic and self-hating bullshit that comes with knowing I can't pay the fucking heating bill.
Stupid Boston pay-for-heating. Nothing sucks worse than being cold and broke.
Well, lots of things suck worse. They just don't feel that way right now.
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