Endless numbers counting endless days

Today eight years ago a silent thing happened and that thing was really an unthing, an undoing, it was a death and the person who died was my father.

Today I attended the last class of my degree. These are remarkable things, and that's why I'm marking them by writing, but I feel so ordinary.

I don't really believe that death is the end of someone's influence and I don't really believe that I'll stop learning. Some sort of passage has been marked by the arbitrary ascription of numbers to days, and without those numbers there would not be these anniversaries. I carry my fathers death everyday like I am a little holy shrine. More and more the things I do and say seem more and more like the things he did and said, which makes me feel like death is just a veiling, biology prevails.

Croc teeth

Being quite gay*, I have a pretty good gaydar.
I knew someone in my high school year was gay four years before she did from her body posture in class.

Being homo you also develop a pretty good homophobestrobe which detects the presence of fear inside other people (a bit like gaydar but uses electromagnetic pulse instead of radio waves).

I've been lucky enough to encounter homophobia from institutions and individuals, sometimes in the form of non-recognition, sometimes in the form of physical and verbal abuse, sometimes in the form of denial. Some people decide not to talk to me because I'm gay. Reciprocally, I decide not to talk to some people because I'm gay.

Why would a sane person walk onto the flabby tongue of an open-mouthed crocodile? I don't hide, I just choose not to let myself get mauled by people with sharp teeth. How do you see the dimensions of someone's teeth? Listen to their vocabulary. Listen to their ideas.

I am all for dentistry. People can get all kinds of work done, teeth filed down, braces, dentures, fillings... People change. And I know that opinions and values are social constructions that can be de-constructed, and I'm interested in reconstructing them by being rational e.g. "is it better to ignore something that exists or acknowledge something that exists?", "is violence an appropriate response to a non-violent phenomena?"

I find marginalised and repressed people often have a wicked sense of humour. You can either hang yourself or laugh at the fact that mainstream society, media and politics aren't talking about you when they say "family", "marriage" and even "love" because of something as inconsequential as your sexuality (love in advertising is heterosexual love). Either get hurt by it or hurt yourself laughing over it.

This leaves me in a problematic space. Being comfortable with yourself means you have nothing to prove, yet being a member of a minority group means constantly having to prove that your existence is legitimate.
Proving that you have the right to have nothing to prove... It's like undergoing a job interview for the position of Yourself.

              I believe I am the best applicant for being Myself.

                                                                                                                     Why do you believe that?  

             I've been Myself for 23 years.

                                                                                                                     How will you perform in that role?

            I won't perform.

                                                                                                                    Why not?

           It comes naturally to me.

                                                                                                                    Are you sure you're qualified?

*by quite gay I mean mostly, partially, occasionally, absolutely, annually, casually, semantically, linguistically,  literally, litigiously, strictly, spiritually, sporadically, superficially, religiously and not gay, because sexuality isn't a salami you can slice.

Sandwiches

Teaching is all about making sandwiches.

Whipping up a sambo is essentially the skill of telling it how it is in a digestible format. Slap praise on either side of some gristly criticism and your communication is flavoured with encouragement. I guess this is also called tact.

For someone who grew up with one parent imbued with the social talents of a snail and the other with the etiquette of a very vocal parrot, tact was one of those skills I didn't inherit. I cultivated it over 23 years of keen observation and trial and error.

The parrot half of my DNA still fluffs up in a rage at the idea of having to mediate the truth, and my snail side curls away at the thought of having to tell the truth. I've mostly rewritten all that programming and now I'm as diplomatic as a dachshund.


How does the teaching sandwich relate to the wider world beyond report writing and assessment feedback?
Try making a sandwich for your lover, your mother, your best friend. Sandwiches can be squeezed into letters, phone conversations, post-it notes, dinner conversations... Sandwiches can be about politics, culture, real estate. My favourite part about sandwiches is that you can make them cynical.

e.g.
"Dear Raine & Horne,

Thanks for managing our lease.

Please fix the blinds, let us repaint, fix the tap in the laundry, fit proper ventilation into our bathroom and buy us a new mailbox.

Once again, thanks for managing our lease.

Yours Sincerely,
__________"

Sleepless nights for limitless beings

Today someone asked me "where do you start and where do you end?"

How big am I? How old am I? Am I really only fifty-five kilograms?
I wasn't always this heavy.
I wasn't always this light.

But I always was, regardless of my dimensions. How old will I get before all traces of my existence are smudged into the surface texture of the universe? How soft is the transition? Aren't I really just the concentrated mass of the sexual prowess of my predecessors? Didn't I start whenever it was that whoever they were first fucked?

Just exactly who am I? How many pieces of me are there? Am I like potassium - present in different places at the same time? Where have my words, ideas, opinions already gone? What am I doing there? Having a holiday?

How much of me is there to go around? Am I a finite resource like this body? Or am I infinite like the architecture of thought? How many questions can I fit into my lifetime? Is that a sadistic question?

How am I going to get around? Should I be a teacher or a carpenter? A potter? An illustrator? Am I going to be generous? Considerate? Passionate? Compassionate?

How fast do I go? How fast should I go? Isn't it nonsensical to rage through life at break-neck speed? Isn't it best to live slowly? Won't time seem longer? Won't life seem longer?

Why aren't I tired?

Happy

Happiness isn't an outcome, it's a skill. You don't at some point reach happiness and you don't get happy by working yourself into the ground trying to achieve happiness.

You can't give happiness to someone. Happiness isn't a gift, it's part of your identity. Unlike limbs, transplanting a state of mind isn't possible. However, your happiness can help other people to recognise what happiness is, and start them on their own search for happiness.

I don't think happiness comes from ideas, the past, the future, money, food, sex, education, objects or power. In my experience happiness comes from working conscientiously and consistently, being flexible, making decisions, pro-actively caring about something larger than your own life and being part of a family.

               I am giving you happiness in a box!                                        Oh. What does it look like?       

                                                                                                                

              A lot of work, flexibility, altruism, an 

             ability to make your own choices... 

            I also put your whole family in there, 

           friends included, just the way they are!
           The whole kit and kaboodle!