Transgender

People practice a bifurcation of reality.
The most elementary discrimination one makes about a stranger is whether they are a man or a woman, a girl or a boy. I haven't seen gender help anyone, I've only perceived it as a constraint.

Humans like to split things into infinitesimally minute pieces. For example: man, short, angry, middle class, white, fat. These labels are like mental maths games that add up to some kind of "answer". The answer is invariably a judgement.
A judgement can never be verified as absolute truth, but judgments are nonetheless believed in.

Getting back to gender: I do not believe it exists, but I can cede that other people believe in it.
Transgender is an actual modality of experience, which pretty much poos all over the gender binary. The fact that transgender is little understood or poorly publicised does not mean it is illegitimate.

Civilizations have always progressed falteringly. Anything revolutionary or contrary is initially snuffed. There are knowledges we have destroyed because they extended beyond the boundaries of a dominant worldview. The first nations people of Australia (note nations because hundreds of nations lived on this land) knew everything necessary for survival in this country, but because that knowledge was contrary to the invading Western worldview it was destroyed. I do not even know how many nations, people or languages died.

In a sort of similar way, third gender, gender neutral or ungendered are concepts that this particular society (Anglophone Western) cannot really understand and therefore see as irrelevent. Our language doesn't accommodate pronouns for such people, which indicates a belief that such people have never existed. We have always existed.

I am uprooting the gender-centric mental maths games I play in my own head because I know that I am gender neutral in a female body. So it would be unfair for me to go around assuming a person is a man because they don't have breasts, because they have a beard, because their voice is deep.

Gender and the physical body have been so bound together in our thinking.
But think about stick insects: they sure look like sticks, but they are not sticks.
Think about elementary particles: solid objects are comprised mostly of empty space.

Appearances only offer a shell of understanding, the substance is often invisible.
These days I see gender as a shell of sorts, an armor for protecting the purest and most inexpressible part of oneself. I feel a need to disarm, to allow that ineffable self to be seen. Perhaps I will surgically modify my body, or gender neutralise my clothes or change my name. Or maybe I will decide those things are unnecessary. The only thing I am sure of is myself.

How am I sure? Because it is so uncomfortable wearing this shell.

Clammy clam calamity

INTERESTING FACT! Transgender is often perceived as an intermediary state. "Trans" comes from Proto-Indo-European "to cross over", and many people believe that transgender people are crossing over from female to male or visa-versa. That belief excludes the whole gamut of gender-variant individuals who are beyond or between male and female.

Humanity is a big jerk who is beating up the Earth

If humanity was one person, from an inter-stellar perspective they would look like an innocent child who grew into an adult jerk.

The things that we all subscribe to and act out seem to be, how to put this gently... unintelligent. As a species we seem to work primarily with our basal ganglia: the parts of our brains that are concerned with dominance, control, aggression and territory.

It deeply concerns me that humans mine into the crust of the earth to extract minerals for the purpose of creating plastic bottles that will be used once and then put back into the Earth as a piece of garbage that will poison everything they contact as their toxins are released for up to 450 years.
It deeply concerns me that humans have developed complex law systems and regulate when and how people cross roads but do not adhere to the law of nature which states that ALL THINGS ARE IMPERMANENT and disrespect this fundamental and self-evident law of reality by "possessing" things (land, houses, animals, beds, key chains, televisions, letter boxes, paper, food, fences, ideas...)
Any thing that exists I will guarantee you will be consumed physically and legally by the human desire to own.

For all of our talk about how rational science has ushered in a quantum leap for human consciousness, we have made very haltering progress on the frontier of human rights and have moved in retrograde concerning Earth's rights. If we can't treat our own species with respect and kindness we can't develop our respect for non-speaking beings such as forests, oceans and animals. If technology is not eco-centric, it's because people are not eco-centric. People are not eco-centric because they are egocentric. If people continue to think primarily about themselves and not about the environment, we will not have a hospitable planet to live on. Earth is finite.

The truly disappointing thing is that humans have examples of generosity and interconnection surrounding them in their natural environment yet few of us follow such a way of life. We are largely unconscious of it, but we already are interconnected. Sunlight doesn't just touch you, it penetrates you. We breathe in tandem with the plant kingdom. Whatever you consume orally drives you nutritionally. You are constantly shedding cells into the atmosphere. Ironically, you don't own things, you are everything. 

When animals eat each other, it might appear violent, but actually they are just sharing. Sharing around the nutrients. When humans kill each other, that is actual violence. We simply destroy. And contrary to that, we also compulsively make. Yet because energy is not created or destroyed, what we make always takes its toll. The consequence of feeding the unstoppable demand for more stuff is that we deplete Earth's resources and enslave each other. That sounds extreme, but it's not. It's simply true. We don't talk in such ways because it causes guilt.

Instead of being guilty, just recycle as much as you can, just foster an attitude of respect in yourself for other beings and learn how you can act in accordance with your values. Just share your concern, like I am.

Bird recycling a worm. 

Articulating ineptitude

I would like the write about three linked incidents on the topic of awkwardness.

Last school holidays I worked at an indoor pool watching children swim, assisting them to pull goggles and strap floaties on. One afternoon a be-goggled red-headed boy swam up to me and asked

"Excuse me, do you know how to become someone's friend without seeming awkward?"

I was a bit thrown by how earnestly the question was asked and was deeply affected: this is something I hadn't known how to go about myself for most of my childhood. Nonetheless I gave a pretty practical answer - ask their name and ask what they are playing, and whether they would like to play with you.
He thanked me and swam off to do some thinking, and I crouched there doing some thinking too, watching others paddling and splashing.

After a few minutes he swam back up to me.
"Excuse me, I'm not very confident."

I reflected to him that sometimes people need to pretend to be more confident than they are in order to achieve particular goals, and that in actuality he may be more confident than he admits to himself. After all he asked a rather bold question that many people would be too hesitant to ask. His very actions revealed the falsity of his disbelief in himself. He nodded in agreement and swam away.

After the signal had gone for everybody to hop out of the pool and start getting changed he scuffled past and said "Thank you very much for helping me" with a nice smile. I asked how it went, he said it went well. Even this gesture, his thanking me, had the same unique combination of sincerity and tactlessness that his original question did.

The very admittance of your own awkwardness is both deeply awkward and so authentic that it is quite natural.
I know a few people who display this paradoxical behaviour. And I suspect that I might be one of them.

A few years ago I admitted to a group of strangers that I was petrified because at a deep level I doubted whether I had any character, any substance, any defining qualities that made me distinct from the blur of humanity. The man orchestrating the conversation said it was character that compelled me to ask such a cutting question. Sometimes our own nature is so close to us, like a second skin, that we fail to see it completely.

I find there is something very attractive about people who are honest about their gawkiness, their nervousness, their ineptitude. Because awkwardness is essentially difficulty handling oneself, the very act of conceding that you have faults or issues or parts of yourself that you don't yet understand is the reversal of awkwardness. It's the momentary artful expression of artlessness. It's a ritual. People who are constantly undergoing such rituals are wonderful to be around, they're always renewing themselves, always undoing themselves. But more pertinently they are always just themselves, without any veils concealing however graceless or imperfect they are.

The speedo

The split

They say I'm a polite person, but there's someone who I have been obnoxiously rude to.

I completely withdrew my attention from them. I completely ignored them whenever they attempted to speak with me, and I assumed the worst of them. I believed they had no value. I believed they were useless, pathetic, would never do anything good for the world. I abused them verbally and psychologically. I behaved in this manner for years.

Because I was disgusted by them I was oblivious that my behaviour was not okay. What's horrible about this is that we had to spend a lot of time together. They began to wish that I would die, and who could blame them? We were deeply entrenched in a dysfunctional relationship.

Eventually the pain of having been a pariah for so long led to a deep rage and this person became destructive. This person is not a whole person, but a part of myself who has been separated from me. 

I am not entirely without fault in my damaging behaviour. This separation, when this aspect of myself became seen as a foreign entity lodged inside me, happened at large long before I existed. Before me, there were psychologists and psychiatrists who expounded that depression is a problem which needs to be managed. Before me, people were obsessed with achieving and being productive, and they still are. So when I began to exist and when a sadness was inside me the culture of self control and emotional management was deeply entrenched in my world. I began an unconscious excommunication with sadness.

This estrangement has been punctuated with brief sharp jabs of spite. Once I wrote to them: "If I ever commit suicide it would be only to kill you. Never as a tragic mishap in a war against my own abilities, but because you are a disability not worth living with." Because emotions live in a part of the psyche that precedes language, our arguments would be a combination of my own malevolent use of English and their deep raging dance. It thumps in my chest, painful and restless. 

I had the opportunity to speak with this alienated entity a few nights ago in a focused state with another person there to guide the process. With a lot of cajoling, patience, pain and fear we spoke. In a voiceless voice they said "I don't trust you because even though I live in your heart you have given me no love." 

So I learnt that I have been unbearably cruel. I am learning that people in this society are far more cruel and unkind to themselves than they would dare to be towards others. And sometimes unconsciously so. We are taught to block depression, advised to avoid it through medication. We divorce ourselves from sadness and are so hell-bent on disassociating with it that it begins to feel foreign.

Now my depression and I go on romantic dates. They still dance a wild pounding ache in my chest but when I stop to listen (instead of panic over the irrational pain), and say nice things like "hey baby I can see you" or "you're welcome here" or "what's up?" they lay heavy and flat and stare. This hurts less. I'm hoping that despite the years of senseless abuse I've aimed at this fugitive, we can integrate into one whole being who feels all feelings without having to internally bash and split themselves up.

Here's to a loving relationship with all of your selves.

Three cheers for deep depression!
So bold and wise and free!

Who like a glass of wine

Adds flavour and depth to me

(hee hee hee hee hee)

A little trip, a little flick, a wandering breath

I went on a journey last night, in a few hours I travelled very far. My body barely moved but I journeyed around the world.

My breath, like a little white flame with a sparkly tail, shot a few inches out of my mouth with a spunky and curious kind of flick, and then with great speed and a motion similar to that of a jellyfish pulsing through water, began to aviate it's way through Earth's atmosphere independent of my body.

It sailed through oceanic winds, drifted on lazy warm urban breezes, got sucked into many mouths... The nostrils of a chicken in an open green pasture. It slipped into the mouth of a woman resting on a hillside, did a simple somersault in her lungs and continued on its way. It was inhaled by many animals, many people, gasped up by building storms, weighed down by particles of water. Never destroyed or osmosed by the surrounding air currents, a sovereign little breath making a journey that was determined wholly by circumstance. None of it was difficult, all of it was interesting.

It slipped up the sides of the Himalayas. That was the culmination of its pilgrimage. The mountains glowed pink and blue, shafts of light illuminated facades coated in brilliant snow. Then it returned instantaneously, and I lay there realising that my breath is always journeying across the Earth. Every exhalation is a tiny throb, a small yearning, a mute prayer, a wish to be consumed, to be shared. Every breath is consumed, is shared, mingles with all air and passes through all lungs. Every breath is a sharp jab of chilled mountain air, is a heavy haze of noxious polluted metropolitan air, is the salty whip or lazy drift of air that rides on oceans, is the dusty hot burning air that tortures desert sand into rippling tides of blazing patterns; undulating furrows and crests repeated on and on. You don't need to think of yourself as separate from all this, and you can think of yourself as inseparable from all this.

Veg and other consumables

What is happening?
Everything is exceeding itself. Shampoo for ultra-healthy hair, sports drinks to induce that "super-hydrated" feeling, mascara for lashes up to 200 times thicker. What does ultra-healthy mean anyway? Isn't "healthy" the peak category in health? What does it feel like to be super-hydrated? Soggy?

Egg whites now come pre-separated and cartoned with added "egg flavour" to make scrambled eggs so much simpler. Avocado comes packaged pre-mashed in little plastic cups with preservative added.
It won't be too long until babies come packaged in a tear-top resealable plastic film, floating in a nutrient enriched fudge flavoured protein goo with activated chia seeds.

Personally, I want to pull my food from the earth with both hands, and admire it in all it's freaky dirty sexy glory. I think there is no healthier existence than the existence of a vegetable in rich soil, fed by rain, the earth, the sun. Thinking nothing, growing slowly, smelling like mud.

Hello I am a little beet

With a hairy root

And this is a little worm

Making its commute

Embarrassment

"Saints are not only rare but disconcerting. Even in scripture, they are often found embarrassing!" - Bhaduri Mahasaya

Maybe we are actually just embarrassed of ourselves, and people of extraordinary holiness who listen fully with no thoughts in their mind or look deeply into your eyes without judgement are like pools of stillness that reflect the image of yourself back to you.

Saints are people we think of as utterly themselves and simultaneously totally inviolable. Joan of Arc got burnt, but hey! She was totally unabashed about her schizophrenia and not only do we remember her for that, we reckon she's full of greatness! Same thing with Mohammed. Francis of Assisi went around in nothing but a hessian sack (if the portrait paintings are anything to go by) - screw worldly possessions, that dude got totally dope on nature. We're somewhat comfortable remembering these dead people, but if you met Joan in the midst of one of her visions, or caught a whiff of Francis in his sack, you'd be embarrassed.

These people were being themselves.

Why are we embarrassed of selfhood?
Who told you that you are embarrassing?
Who convinced you that parts of your body and mind and feelings need to be hidden?
Why do you still believe them?

Her Holiness

Pond face

I am beginning to feel that aside from all the other factors that contribute to your well being (e.g. watermelons and sunshine), good company is the most precious.

You have thoughts, you have a mouth, you have language, you have been made to communicate and you have been doing so ever since your gummy little jaws first parted to scream with pain.

Keeping company is like giving birth to yourself all over again, because in all conversations you are divesting the cloak of silence and expressing what you think, feel and know. You become someone. Others become someone when you talk with them, so keeping company is like manifesting not only yourself, but providing space for others to bring themselves to the surface and be witnessed also. Of course your actions also express your thoughts, feelings and knowledge, but talking offers the opportunity to articulate these things coherently. A person can cry, and I can only guess as to why unless they tell me.

So much of ones self is enshrined in the company they keep. Engaging with people on a surface level provides nothing but a cage to contain your self with bars through which you can offer piecemeal bits of ideas and opinions. To be looked at and listened to and asked questions of provides an arena where you can be recognised, you can explore, question, collaborate. If you offer your ears and eyes to people it's beautiful how others blossom in front of you, and how you act as a body of water in which others can grow and bloom. When you are generous with your self the invaluable gift of good company seems to attract itself to you.

Humans hug and trees breathe

You can’t hug a wall, because a wall is flat and large so your arms can’t hold it. Walls also have no arms, so they can’t embrace you.

To show a wall that you appreciate it and the building it’s part of, rest the flattest part of you against it. Rest your back against the wall. Leaning on a wall is the best way to show a wall your love. You need to think about how to use your anatomy to express affection that will be recognised by the still, vertical plane of a wall. A lean shows that you’re comfortable, that you plan to be there for a while. These are behaviours walls recognise. Plenty of people lean on walls and don’t realise they are showing affection.

The best way to show a tree your love is to tilt your head up and hyperventilate. Hugging a tree means nothing to a tree whereas carbon dioxide means something to a tree.