home[sick]ness

you don't know how much you will miss it until it's gone-
like a bad breakup:
you can't stay, but you're not sure you want to leave.

you will forget just how important it was
that the streetlamps dotting the hills looked like stars in the city glare;
you will remember the crossing lines of bridge cable above your head,
the graffiti under overpasses,
and the grate that made you confront the river.

you would never guess how much your ears seek out a few words,
a twisted sound, a turn of phrase,
the gravelly laugh of a place where they're born with smoke in their lungs. 
 

pre-election thoughts, 2012

i am legitimately anxious about this election. never have i felt so strongly that my entire life depends on the outcome of one day.

i'm sick of watching candidates attack each other on television instead of talking about what they'll do better. the few positive ads get swallowed up in all the negative noise.


i feel every day like my freedom as a woman and a queer person is being threatened, like it is at risk of being taken away. it goes far beyond the usual pro-life-vs-pro-choice argument. not only is my right to decide whether to have an abortion being threatened, but so is my right to decide whether to use birth control--for reproductive or other medical purposes. my freedom to choose who i marry is literally being put up for a vote by my neighbors. my freedom of education is being threatened by politicians who want to reduce student loans and to cut funding to schools. my right to control my own body is being actively threatened by politicians who believe that rape can be an act of God.

Senators and Congressmen, if your God is a god who will rape women so that more children can be conceived, then you should be looking for another god. 

i am disgusted that there are so many Americans who believe they can justify voting for these threats to our rights, freedoms, and basic safety because "the economy's bad." i will not apologize for believing that money should never become more important than living human beings. 

everybody celebrates differently.

co-worker this morning: "K in a skirt!!"
me: "it is Halloween..."

Brattle Sq, October 24

last night i walked into a Tibetan Freedom rally in Brattle Square
i heard him singing from a half-mile away,
ten minutes
that voice and that throaty roar in the microphone drew me in

eye contact
woman with bowed head and american flag
young man dancing waving the flag of tibet
this throat-singer chanting words in a language my body had learned,
years before,
lifetimes before.

before life, when words
meant no meaning had been exchanged,
but where the vibrations of the earth and the trees and the human throat
were all expressions of the divine in the universe.

i loved it then and i love it now,
i listen for meaning above words.
i am trapped in the words of my body,
my limited shell attempting to capture the likeness of the invisible divine
so far removed from me that i could not hope to ever achieve it.
i escaped my freedom.

purgatory is life.

we know we have suffered here, in this lifetime
we know we have earned no suffering

i stood there transfixed,
brought in by the call to prayer.
i responded in a language i did not understand.
stop. pray. breathe. stand.

tears of fear and pain and sorrow built behind my eyes.
i could not say why. i heard
the truth of his suffering.

it got bad enough that he was here, instead of there.

i began, after standing for some minutes
feeling on the verge of tears and held in deep respect,
to nod my head in agreement
and laugh.

there is joy, there is hope, there is compassion
and we will still be here, somewhere.

Tibet is not a part of China.

Femme-butch dynamics in football fandom

all my favorite players are receivers; all his are defenders.

update:

on that biological clock: ticking has stopped. alarm now ringing loudly. trying desperately to locate snooze button.

conundrum:

the worst (?) thing about depression is that when you hit the point where you're too depressed to do anything, the only solution is to get off your ass and do things.