The Town

This is my first video post. It is a marionette tragedy in two acts. Although I have used some clips of copyrighted materials - notably "Mad World" by Gary Jules (cover of the original by Tears for Fears). If a significant amount of people watch this I guess I'll have to deal with that issue. However, I don't think it'll make any real impact. It's really just for fun. Enjoy!

Love Is an Open Wound

My family just told me this past weekend that one of my favorite beings - our cat, Sidney - has been missing for two weeks. She is either dead, foraging to survive or thriving in someone else's care. She is a gorgeous cat - a ten-year-old himalayan with long, white fur and grey tips - and she's incredibly friendly and sweet! It's highly possible that someone picked her up and took her home. Hopefully she is ok.

However, it is also possible that Sidney has passed. This possibility is, of course, the hardest to swallow. I bawled and cried and paced and panicked and had trouble breathing and cried and cried over this possibility. Then, after a few days of thinking on it, I realized that it is more likely that she is ok since my brothers have been searching all over for her and no one has found any evidence of her demise. She was too young and healthy to just die for no reason so there would be evidence if she was killed by some animal or some thing - a body, fur, blood, etc. After coming to that conclusion, I have been feeling somewhat more optimistic about her prospects. As soon as I get up to Portland, OR, where my family lives (they actually live about 20 miles southeast of Portland in a town called West Linn), I plan on implementing a huge search and rescue effort. I will not leave there after 5 days without putting in the best effort that I can possibly put in to find her. Because I love her.

I love Sidney, or Sidnerelli as I like to call her. Her disappearance and possible demise hurts so much - makes it hard to breath at times, even - because I love her so much. I was thinking about this fact about love - that when someone you love dies it hurts so much that it feels unbearable and I was feeling like I just can't do it anymore - deal with the pain of losing someone I love. I looked at my cats, Molly and Bates, who live with me and my little dog, Letia, and I couldn't even imagine what I'd be like if one of them had died or was even missing for as long as Sidney. It's not that I love them more than I love Sidney, but our lives are definitely more intertwined since I live with them.

In any case, I realized that despite the pact that I've made with my pets, it's highly likely that they will die before I do and thus, I will have to endure their deaths. That realization made me feel - for a moment at least - like I might have made a mistake falling in love with these beings, that I am now doomed to that pain whereas if I hadn't taken them into my life (or even allowed them to be born, as the case was for Molly and Sidney), I wouldn't be doomed to such pain. Then I reminded myself that of course I didn't make a mistake bringing these beings into my life, that they have brought me so much joy and love - how could I even consider not having them?

This brings me to the thesis of my post: love is an open wound. When you love someone, you are opening your heart to them and exposing yourself to certain grief. Of course, that's not all that love is - it is a wonderful joyous feeling and everlasting comfort and more than anything anyone can ever completely describe. But it is guaranteed to give pain because of its loss - either due to the love ending or due to the object of love leaving or dying. Unless you die first. But then your death will hurt the ones that love you. So there's no getting around it - the suffering will be there with or without you.

I also considered what I had thought previously - what if you never let yourself love anyone? Could you really avoid the pain and suffering associated with love in that case? I thought about this and came to the conclusion that no, there's no way around it - either you love and lose or you just lose and lose. There's no joy in never loving anyone or being loved by no one! I'm not even sure that's possible, but if it were I cannot imagine that it would be a pain,-suffering-and-grief-free existence. Therefore, it is preferable to endure love and loss, and, since love is an open wound, make sure to tend to it so it doesn't become infected.

Lesbians are gay too!

I realize that the majority of homophobia is from the male perspective - the fear of gay men and probably anal sex - although I'm honestly not 100% sure of the underlying issues. However, I am so tired - so sick of - being ignored as a gay woman! If we're not discriminated against, we're the subjects of male fantasies - although not really women like me, the more masculine type of lesbian. I don't know which is worse - the discriminiation or straight male fantasies!

I'm writing this blog post because of, yet another, homophobic line of reasoning put forth in a question to Ted Olson, one of the Plaintiff Attorneys for the Federal Unconstitutionality of California's Prop 8 case, by the anti-marriage equality group ironically called the National Organization for Marriage (NOM):

"Do you really believe that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and that gender is irrelevant to parenting? If gender is really irrelevant, why do self-described “gays” insist on having a male sex partner? Why isn’t a really masculine woman just as acceptable as a male sex partner?"

Well, actually, some gay men do like masculine women - I've been hit on by more gay men at clubs than gay women! (I hope that's because women just don't hit on anyone as much as men do!) Not all gays "insist" on having a male sex partner! I insist on having a female sex partner - but more than just a sex partner - a loving partner!

Strangely, I find it offensive that all over the media the most common homophobic remarks and blatant fears are regarding gay men and not gay women/lesbians. Obviously, the homophobic remarks are offensive all in and of themselves - but I guess my point is about how everything's from the male perspective. I also think that if straight men can understand how women can be gay (maybe because they are less afraid of women or threatened by their sex), maybe they could then also understand gay men in the same way that they understand gay women and realize it's not about sex - it's about a loving relationship that does not threaten them, their masculinity or their sexuality! If anything, straight men should be thankful for the existence of gay men - it reduces the size of the male pool of heterosexuals without reducing the female pool! Straight men should feel more threatened by lesbians cause we do deplete the female pool for heterosexual men! But really, neither of us do because the pool size of heterosexuals is always the same since if we're hooking up with them then they aren't heterosexuals!!

Book-ends

I recently read the book, "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer. It is about a young 22-24 year old man that gives away all his possessions (donating $25,000 to charity to end hunger), then travels the western US by hitchhiking and working odd-jobs, then makes a final "ultimate" journey to live in the Alaskan bush for 3-4 months, where he ends up dying from starvation. It's a true story and the book is basically an investigation of how this boy/man, Chris McCandless, comes to this end. It's the type of book where you know the basics of the story from the beginning - that he will die by starvation in the Alaskan bush. However, I still wanted to read it, I suppose because I am a bit of a voyeur when it comes to people making life-altering or, ultimately, -terminating decisions. Also, he died only three months before my sister died in 1992. I can even recall where I was when he was dying - I was in Spain, having the worst trip I ever had because I was having the very first major depressive episode of my life.

There are a lot of synchronicities that I am having with this particular book/story at this particular time in my life. I started reading the book on the plane returning home from Spain - a second trip to Spain 15 years later, but this time with my family and having been in treatment for my depression for 15 years and now stable, non-symptomatic. I was 15 when my sister died, and now it's 15 years later. I have been thinking of this trip as a sort of book-end to that period of my life. However, maybe it's not this trip that will be the book-end. I have also started going to a group called "A Year to Live" which meets once a month for a year to "practice dying," as the facilitator says. In a year, we will meet one last time on the day we "die". The premise of the group is to really try to live this year as if it is the last year of our lives - to try to do what we might do if we found out we would die in a year, which we might, anyway. We could die on any day, at any moment. I started going to this group right before I left for Spain.

Both my sister and Chris McCandless lived fast lives, but seemed to achieve what they'd always wanted in the last year of their life - Chris spent over 100 days "living off the land" in the Alaskan bush and my sister had a baby (and a fiancé and a home of her own.) Chris was 24 (or 25, don't know) when he died and my sister was 19, two months shy of 20. I don't believe either of them wanted or believed they were going to die when they did. At least Chris knew he was dying in the last few days of his life - he even wrote a short goodbye note and took a photo of himself waving goodbye while holding the note. All it said was: "I had a good life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and God bless all." In the photo, despite his extreme gaunt and almost skeletal appearance, he is smiling a bright, what appears to be genuine, smile. He is really at peace and happy, it seems. I find that so intriguing. How did he get there?

I have no answers to the above but it's what I am searching to find - that same peace or contentment with my life. I am haunted by my sister's death and now by Chris' story. I think he's a remarkable person, but I don't necessarily agree with everything he did as told in the book - he cut himself off from his family which really hurt them, making the death that much harder. At least by the time my sister died, I think my family had all come together and we all knew we loved each other. On the other hand, Chris made it clear that he was ok with dying, basically giving a re-assuring note to his death, that he was at peace and had a happy life. I don't know that my sister would've felt the same way - she was just beginning the life she wanted (almost) - having just had a child. All three of them died - my sister, her baby (my nephew), and the father (her fiancé). I'm sure she would not have been content at all three of them dying.

Another part of Chris' story that haunts me is that he was so intense and certain of how he thought things and people should be, and he lived these certainties - he really wanted to live life without the need for possessions or money. I admire that, but I suppose I also find myself feeling the dilemma that I don't want them yet I need them - for instance, I have debt to pay off from school so I can't just quit everything. Or I suppose I could, but then I'd be on the run from creditors and eventually the law, which is also not the way I wish to live. However, I suppose he was still young and hadn't come to have as many responsibilities. I think he would have. He was obviously extremely intelligent, just made a couple of mistakes that cost him his life. And in the end, he was ok with those mistakes - he accepted them - which is a type of responsibility.

I hope that my journey this year will help me get closer to that same type of peace that Chris felt. On the other hand, sometimes I worry that I don't want to be too ok with dying - cause then I might just die at that point.

An honest view of sex from this lesbian

This is my first post. As such, I thought the topic of sex would be rather intriguing enough.

It is not hard to like sex when it feels good and when feeling that good is easy. However, probably as a woman and not having such a large, and readily accessible sexual organ, it is not always so easy. Sure, it's a mixture of hormones, neurotransmitters, blood supply, knowledge of anatomy and the sensations that are related to anatomy, but it is also something more than that (although maybe not to men, I really can't say.) Sex with others is work. Masturbation is like brushing one's own teeth - it's so much easier to brush your own teeth than to have someone else do it. Yet, sex with another has its own perks, I guess, except for the extra work. I have a hard time getting over the work part unless I'm really attracted to the other.

Then there's the idea of attraction. Why are we attracted to who we are attracted to? Why does one person make my insides do a fluttery-flip, while another barely registers as anything? Why am I attracted to women much more often than men? This unknown only irritates me because I am rarely attracted to people and therefore I am rarely up for having sex with someone else, even though I really like sex when it feels good. But I really dislike it when it feels more like work than pleasure.

Sometimes I am ashamed that I am not into sex with more people more often. Sometimes I feel like there might be something wrong with me. But I can get off - I do this all the time when I masturbate. Sometimes I masturbate several times a day, and I don't even need to be thinking of anyone in particular (in fact, it's better if I don't.) I wish I could say it is normal, but I don't know for sure. I guess it's not a problem, really, except that I am still single and have not come across someone who is my match - in this way or in any other way, really. So I am left to wonder...to wonder if I am alone like this or not.