Pittsburgh weather

watching the rain come & go
berate the city for thinking we could go without
breathe an answer to the prayers of things green.

we shake like ducks in the wet.
go about our business, let it roll right off us.
this is the term of our tenure.

long-awaited thunder comes,
the catharsis of the cold season,
a Homeric purgation,
the scream of a newborn summer.

We thirst!

the robins always sing after the rain,
as if waking to a new dawn.

---
11 may 2009

on fate?

i am starting to think that your first 20-30 years prepare you for the life you are going to live in ways you can't anticipate and may never realize.

i could elaborate on my reasons for thinking this, but i don't think i have a firm enough grasp on them myself, yet. it's strange when you reach a point where you have a conviction not about the way things should be, but about the way things are. and then you realize that this makes perfect sense in the context of your life, that it grows logically out of your experiences. we are not designed to fuck up. we are designed to do what we need to do, in such a way that most people may not even realize they are doing it. think about it: in one way or another, everything you have been or done has prepared you for this moment. and this moment is preparing you for the next one, or for some non-sequential future time that you can't even foresee. not only are we made to do what we need to do, but we are built such that each person's path intersects with each other person's path to help them get where they are going too.

i don't know if i believe in fate, inasmuch as i don't know if i believe that each person's life has only one possible outcome. but i do know i believe that ultimately, everything can only ever be okay.

on a word

sometimes, the word you need doesn't exist, so you have to use one that comes close, even if it's not quite right. this has been causing me no end of confusion lately. but, confusion makes for fun writing, so...

when i choose to call her my girlfriend, i have my reasons. some of them are selfish. actually, most of them are selfish. it's easier, for one thing, than trying to explain: "well...we're together, so i guess she's my girlfriend, but she's not really a girl, but she's not really a boy either, and....oh fuck it." most people don't need (and wouldn't understand) the explanation anyway.

besides that, it's a way for me to come out. (do i even need to do that anymore? i'm pretty sure i'm so obviously queer that it's practically redundant.) there are ways to express one's not-singleness (unavailability?) without coming out, and there are times when i do this. i recognize that there may still be times when i have to. but it's a matter of pride, for me to express that this is who i choose to be with. this is the kind of relationship i'm interested in; this is the identity i'm cultivating for myself.

coming out is not something you do once. it's something you do over and over again for your whole life, and something you decide to do or not do in a thousand ways every day. this is one way in which i choose to do so, and one way in which i make an insufficient lexicon work for me.

it's also really fun to confuse people with a name and a pronoun that don't match. =)

another open letter

happy birthday. i still think of you quite often, and hope you are well.

on silence

"silence is usually more interesting than the stuff on either side of it."

it's amazing what can be conveyed by saying nothing. in a glance, or in the absence of one. a hesitation. a touch.

and this may seem a silly example to use, but the episode of house we watched last night made masterful use of silence. all too appropriately placed, with regards to the conversation.

i wonder that it doesn't work like this for everyone. there are people we can each hear perfectly clearly when they say nothing, and there are people we would never know had "said" anything at all.

in my eval & treatment class last fall, during one lecture the prof emphasized the usefulness of silence as a treatment/counseling tool. if you say nothing for long enough, eventually the other person will fill in. i was the idiot who raised my hand in answer to his question. "i'm really uncomfortable with silence. i always feel the need to fill it. ... especially in some situations. ... like if i'm talking with a professor, and i've finished what i have to say, but they don't say anything yet, and i wonder if i've left something out. ... kinda like you're doing, right now." it doesn't work this way with every person; i suppose it's stronger when we think we are expected to speak. probably with those people who you don't expect will hear you if you say nothing.

and then, there are times when it's completely inappropriate to say anything.

[to return to: silence as a storytelling tool?]

Smoke rings and Silence

i want to meet your grandmother
and tell her how proud of you she should be.
i suspect she knows
that things are not as they always should have been.

the image of the wrinkled woman in her armchair,
steel blue and grey from years of weather,
nodding slowly as she recognizes what she
has always known.

rings of smoke surround her haloed head,
the yarn of her knitting
roughened by misuse,
a soft blanket becomes a sturdy chair cover.
she grasps it with a wizened hand,
worrying the threads with her warning fingers.

your grandmother is a mother twice removed;
she can see the reality of things
from a perspective we can only imagine
and long for.
she may give or receive advice or words as she chooses,
or say nothing
and teach us to learn on our own.

she rests, secure
in the knowledge that her grandchild
will make the same mistakes,
that some things never change,
but that maybe, we are better off this way.

8 may 2009

[part of "the story..."]

She speaks me round, purple,
softening the sharp edges of my name,
like she knows how to fit into my spaces.
fill me in like iridescence,
shimmer off my surfaces, to
make the picture whole. you beautiful painter,

my name does not match my person,
and those who speak it best
are the ones who can make it come the closest.


they pull threads of my being
and weave them with their own voices,
bring us together and becoming in the creation of my name
one, more like one.
they know me. they see my whole
and help me fray pleasantly without falling apart.