A new location: www.inannastcup.blogspot.com

I have transferred all my blog posts to the above address.

All my new posts will be there.

I hope you will follow me to the new blogsite

I did this because yahoo.com, where my old e-mail account was, was asking intrusive questions along the lines of the new requirements to board aircraft.

And I wanted to use my new name: c* mare

If you have any questions, please contact me.

Love c*

Mess

Poetry no good rotten


Fret

Bare

Come












c* mare

A peaceful morning

Ways of knowing that you are home:

You don't fret

You don't treat yourself as a person

You don't collide with the movements of the household orbs

Blaming is not good.



Sitting, buying, banding

JBM

THe Dawn of the Bimbo

So, I'll be the secretary without much to play for.

There's a lot to do, and I'm a Murray.

Mush on.

What is done with Rude People?

Since yesterday's rudeness on my part to one of my readers, I have discovererd that I have few friends because I let no one in. I hope to do that.

Not so fast, right.

Nothing is likely to begin friendships other than freeing myself from pain.

It's not happy to be this poison -er.

Hunter is Goddess.

Must move .

Artemis, please release an arrow !!!

Homely clients need not play.

STamper.

Bitch wanted love, and was proud.

Find girls in the life.

Adios,

Julia

The air -- it's so clear!

To be deliberate, considered, discursive, and fully elaborated in my writing is of course my ideal and is the guiding light of what I do here.

Right.

The fact is that there is no single way to arrive at readable writing that expresses something important to the writer or to the reader.

I have been as varied in my approach as I can be within the limits, usually, of some sort of seriousness of intent and often content.

In this moment, I would rather throw all that by the wayside.

Sometimes, as politics is too important to leave to politicians (or war to generals), writing is too important to be done as a compository set-piece.

alsdkjroeaijfdlkjjRRRRSSSADSS!S!

The Goddess is -- TedslkdjflkejelkjrrA
ANd Faarressdrlkjr'Srlkjeoijd
r

GateeeeerrrsssatadjlfkjerR

Law is somehow fdjslkrjewaer

Gaze at me and you'll find a RSARSRSATRRR

Laazy Is Good.

Say, this is not all that productive -- but it is spontaneoius, so it brings something out of me that otherwise wouild not be ddffpresent. So, here goes!

(Automatic)

GEkrRSRdkrkLRSRSDRDWaRRrWwaRRRRR

Lamination is for all the good people who have insisted on their own way of living.

I hate the way that people find themselves to be some sort djkrl;akjsdrljkr

Crazy



LaRRRRRRSSAARR

and I am jdfldkrer
Chatrrrsasrkl

BsadsdrR

GSDSRRARRJJ

SJUSSS

Anmd there's a lot further to go.

Please be patient, as I am in the midst of devolution/deterioration/sinking to a bottome that I have to say is a kind of instrumentless landing in a fog over an unknown landscape.

I hope I'm still here when it's finished.

You are patient, so I thank you, gratefully, in advance.

There's just so many ways to avoid saying that Julia is very friendly.

To the wrong people, if you know what I mean: "friendly."

As in nearly 200 unprotected and often anonymous sexual encoiunters.

I'm going there.

Why is it that people have the idea that I am hoping for friends that will give me presence?

I am more interested in embracing all that is profound, invigorating and sensual about being a woman, and living a life that does not deny that to me or rto anyone else who can devote themselves to the pleasure that freedom can bring.

Please understand that there is joy, ecstasy and hope in even the emotional depths, unto the moment of death (I believe).

Can you please remember that all that is of this world/the Goddess/(EVERYTHING) is to embrace gratefully and humbly and with love and respect for ALL that is alive, which is to say, ALL.

When the end comes for me as JUlia/Estoril/Brigid I will panic, I will be afraid, and I will be home.

I hope I will be with you.

LOve and happiness,



Tears of Estoril.

Basic Survival

This is one fucked up world

I'm just going to write whatever comes to mind, then go back (maybe) and edit it.

Right now I am having an existential panic attack over whether or not I can survive in this place. The fact is that I HATE the people here. I know that I do really terrible things like look at women the wrong way, disrespect people because of race and class, etc., etc. But that is for the most part something that takes place in my own brain and I am constantly striving not to let that be the basis of what I believe or how I act.

Today I went to the movies with my mother. I just could not stand the way people were looking at me as an object of amusement and as subhuman. These people are local yokel fool/redneck/stupid/arrogant/mean/bitches and their loutish mates. If I had any guts I would have called them out, leading of course to being hospitalized or jailed. Maybe it's worth it. AFter all, it was day time and probably they weren't armed. Instead I imitated how they were looking at me, at my Mother, so SHE would "know how it felt," WHICH WAS DIsrespectful to her. Then I just left. I couldn't stand it. So I bought a book: The collected Oscar Wilde. Good choice.

Then I walked to the parking lot and my Mother drove me home.

The movie was STAR TREK!

Anyway I felt devastated, angry, hopeless and at my wit's end. It appears that I don't belong here or anywhere else, and for whatever combination of reasons I allow myself not to stand up for myself. I felt like smoking crack and made an abortive attempt to find some. I made the remark to my mother, who chided me for doing drugs, and finding them more important than anything else (not true), that what I found was a problem were people who decided to be just like everybody else instead of being themselves. I think that hit home. It did nothing for our "relationship" this beautiful Mother's day.

Then I made the mistake of making an emergency call to my brand new therapist, that absolutely worthless son of a bitch. He managed to listen to me through my tears, said a few perfunctory "I hear you's " or something along those lines and AGREED with me! that I should lie down for a while.

I felt like tearing down this world, or myself or both, and I get to go to bed.

I am extremely frustrated. I am isolated. and this is a danger for my (see title) BASIC survival.

As far as I'm concerned, the people who advocated that I come here did so out of either a misguided sense of pity or an active desire to keep me away from them. My readers can guess who is who.

I don't know where to go, because I did make the decision not to go back to New York. Right now, I just feel like hitting it, except my mohter wouild probably a) beg me, cry, etc. not to go b) have me hospitalized; which is, I haven't said here, what she wouild like to do -- LONG TERM. She has the illusion that there are places for people like me. The only place for people like me is to fight or die, and I'm not going to let anybody decide for me which it's going to be.

So to those of you who know what I'm saying, I salute you for your struggles every day; and for those of you who don't, or dont' "care." FUCK YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.!

It's a Quarter Past Three, and nobody's here but me and me

To DO:

fIND A WAY OUT OF MY mother's house.

Understand my decision not to go back to New York

Train my new psychiatrist and therapist

Learn to accept the future I have embraced while not walking over others in the process.

Not see myself as subhuman for liking to do what I do -- orlet others see me that way.

Write, research, work for money as tutor/personal care assistant/office-retail worker/lowpaid service worker

Prove to others that instability is not all bad , even if it's not what it's cracked up to be.

Embrace myself and new friends.

Get people here to understand just how far behind they are in their politics and thinking.

Find someone with emotions that they aren't afraid to talk about.

Be very very careful about how/whether I involve myself in side activities.

Be happy

All of the above seems extremely reasonable and desirable to me, and I believe I deserve change in a "positive" direction.

I hope that if I offend anyone with my behavior or words, that you will let me know that I have done so, so that I can not do it to you or anyone else again.

Jeez, this coffee makes me optimistic -- the next illegal drug.

I really want my readers to understand that though I may be in isolation for a reason (many of them), I am still committed to advance our cause insofar as it is the cause of justice, and I will talk to and behave according to the needs of anyone whose life has made them the object of hatred, scorn, ridicule or violence.

I've been there in some ways myself.

I really am needing to feel that someone out there is metaphorically holding their arms out to me, that I am not reaching out to thin air.

Suggestions as to how I can change, or whether I shoiuld just move on and barrel along at full speed toward my destiny, are welcome!


Love, the Queen of the Portuguese Beach Resorts

I'm fucked, and I'm going with it

See above

The Eternal Verities of Life

A Tree Creates Fruit

A Seed Creates A Tree

Fruit Nourishes Seed(s)




It finally occurred to me that my appearance of non-happiness is simply a holdover from the days when people continually questioned why I'm not happy. Appearing non-happy is therefore not my fault!!!!!!!

Yeay!



Blast-off!

The streak of preveiling wind/ing is treating this finally her to a beautiful and joyful outpouring of energy.

In other words, I'm going to be okay!

So, what's going on?

I believe that today there has been a pretty sharp realization that one person is not the Creator.

I am very happy and pleased to give reason (where reason is protection of life) and sustenance (of life) to my sister/sib/brother life forms.

You are all the reason for my being on this planet (ALIVE!) and I do not need to feel bad about myself or you or my need to be happy and feel the affection that I deeply need.

Please understand that you and I and we and they are all one.

Be happy

Strong and helpful,

Estoril

Julia

P.S. Thank you transaged activist for introducing me to the trannie in Minneapolis. A truly good and sweet person!

Poetry from the Bored

Noticeable Affectations

Julia Murray

Saturnian brain
Pavlovian plain
Aggressive Act
Lesbian Pact

(Malory release
Janine chalice)

Moment crying
Lover lying

* * *

Roses helping
Bees receiving

Breath embracing
Will/i/am chasing.

End the Drug War

One of my readers kindly related to me some anecdotes which I think reveal much about the spirit and motivation of the "War against Drugs," along with a clear picture of just who is victimizing whom.

First is the situation of a friend of mine and hers and of another reader of mine, none of whom I will name here. He is a former heroin user, who stopped using at least ten years ago, whose treatment on the so-called alternative Methadone ruined his teeth. Right now he is suffering from a severe infection in his mouth which is leaving him in agony. The New York University School? of Dentistry has refused to give him antibiotics, much less pain killers for the simple reason that he used to use drugs. The implication, blatant as usual, is that as a EX-drug user his life is worth nothing, no matter that he is an incredibly sweet and hard working person who basically just wants the best for everyone. Please ask your Deit(ies) that NYU changes its policy, and that my friend survives this horrendous attack against his dignity and his life.

Second is the fact that these days hospitals are forcing people to go through withdrawal without proper medications, just leaving them to the pains and tortures of surviving GETTING OFF a drug. The health care "professionals" taunt their patient/victims by telling them it is their fault what they have done and that, it is implied, (or perhaps said outright) that they deserve to suffer.

A third anecdote is something I personally saw in State Rehab on Ward's Island: Posters on bulletin boards saying, in effect : "Don't like Recovery? There's always Rikers."!!!!! You may draw your own conclusions.

The Drug War is now and always has been about MONEY for Doctors, Insurers and Drug Companies. But the beneficiary of that money going to said social scavengers is the government of the Rich. They have found no better way to target populations and divide (and kill) people. As so often, the government sets up a supposed target (drugs and drug cartels) to cover what they are doing in reality. The basic methods are the methods I've witnessed so many times in police actions and in government-controlled institutions: segregate, demonize, divide and conquer. The interesting fact is that in none of these tactics are the major sources of drug money affected. The War, as it seems all wars, is against the people the government is supposedly trying to protect. They are the major casualties, as well as the social sacrifices which the money machine can feed on, sometimes all too literally. Death, fear of death and fear of each other are the bottom line tools which have decimated so many.

It's a way to kill EVERYBODY.

I think that for drug users, ex-drug users and non-drug users, we need to refuse to go along with the program that is hurting all of us.

Love,

Estoril, with Tears.

(I like to be happy)

Arrogance by Dance

Back in the past:

Not wanting to go on at great length along the lines of the outline in the brackets below, let me just describe a scene from the past.

Place: Transie House

Time: Day, 15 years ago

Dramatis Personae: Myself, nextdoor neighbor's girl Angela, age 3-6, (outside on adjoining stoops) and additional denizens of transie house (inside in living room).

In some relationship to what I do, there is a fearful discussion of our security in the neighborhood, whether prompted by my actions or prior to them. I jump out on to the landing in my miniskirt (naturally) and brief top and start doing my typical go-go dancing for the benefit of anyone who may be watching. Inside there is shock. Outside the neighbor girl smiles in glee and starts dancing with me.

If going outside social norms, "arrogantly," makes a small girl smile and gives her some idea of a certain kind of femininity she can find in herself if she so wishes, then I am glad I did dance.

Postscript:

15 years later I am still living down feelings not only of arrogance but of its opposite, a hypertrophied, if that would be the word, withdrawal from reality, a fear to engage. Now this was a development long in the making, not beginning with a simple and pleasurable dance near the street, but perhaps if people really were accepting of each other in our community, then there would be no judgment of people who occasionally bring attention to themselves rather than hide away. There can be positive results for everyone involved. (Of course, 15 years later, no one really cares about that or any possible repeat performance -- by someone else)

I only wish that in this society, where the arrogant and the exhibitionist are accused of such by those whose primary motivation is to disguise their own arrogance and power and to reduce the freedoms that have been so hard won, that we could step back a moment and realize that the Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world have a place in the development of women's power; and that their troubles are those created by an outside world that rejects any kind of commitment to being one's own person.

I also hope that someday that taking risks is not a one way road to endangering oneself and others in the true sense: drug addiction, homelessness, marginalization, hopelessness. Because I recognize that is often the reality. I cannot judge the reaction of others any more than I wish they judge my little hip-swinging mama imitation.

When the time arrives that fear of crime and of each other, via straight people's abuse of our community, subsides, I hope that the parties that used to erupt spontaneously even in Park Slope, New York return, and I hope there's plenty of freedom to DANCE that goes along with them.

Love, Joo Lee A Store Ill

[BIG Conscience? Hamlet soliliquy? Murders' conscience: what is conscience? Arrogance and Dancing in the Street: Making Angela smile]

Julia's gotta Jam

Say, there, little one, home is good.

Tell me that love is a rose!??

Hand it over to me, big girl -- I've been working at it, and there's a lot to bring forth.

People all would like to see the dreams of the world free from strife and fear.

SO

Love the dark as long as you can love your own life's blood.

There's a famous prayer that there be life everlasting.

Maybe with all the anger and the despair, the grief and hopelessness, wars will teach us that there's only life, that people are love.

Of course, there can be no freedom without sex. And for once let me just draw for us the strength and the power to give as siblings home to each other.

[You might want to know why in the world I expect to get anywhere always writing of home and love as if they are identical and the absolute necessities for human existence that I perceive them to be. It is because home is the body, the beginning and the end of that body, and the sustenance of life from beginning to end. So far, only a few people have managed to be able to keep themselves in the home they need for their whole lives, but maybe that will change. This is not simply idealization. If your body is not your home, then what is? If your body did not come from the home of your mother's womb, then what is human? If you cannot obtain, give or create shelter, then where is survival, comity, kindness and family?]

Be nice to yourself.


Love,

Estoril CUMAEA, Sybil of Sierra Vista.

Oh, just spoke to Dr. Bartalos. Once again I'm working my way back to the big City. Treatment here for transsexuals is virtually nonexistent. I simply want a hormone shot(safely), and a referral to someone somewhere who will give one to me later.

The actress is that beauty loved rose.

2 points if you can guess who was who.

Stars in the Sky, or Stares in this Guy

The rest of the story:

Jamie (anon.), is being a rose.

I think that's okay.


There's only a few ways to overcome adversity.

The one that I believe in adhering to strongly is giving to oneself the power to act in one's best interests. This power can only derive from belief in oneself as a living and growing being none of the flaws or qualities of which predestine one's fate. Choice about where, how and why to extend one's mental, physical and spiritual tendrils stems ultimately, thanks to the way the Goddess has structured the universe, from me.

Sometimes, however, other people's energy is destructive to one for any variety of reasons, and exposure to this energy may prove deeply damaging to an attempt to be self-sufficient as far as emotions and needs for security, love and tolerable conditions of existence go.

I have many, many distortions in my ability to show and receive affection, respect, etc. due to energy blocks of long standing deriving from my early life. I wish to let go of these blocks and take hold of my own power to make a set of friendships that will sustain me and by which I can sustain others. The reason that I mention this person I have called Jamie is that I for a long time did not understand that people who have not taken responsibility for themselves, such as me, do not ultimately have the capacity to share, to communicate, to protect, to render tolerable the conditions of one's own life to the lives of others. In other words, I mistakenly have treated others have sources of energy in an effort to avoid taking responsibility. I am my self in this moment feeling that all the work I have done on myself these past 2-3 years has led to the knowledge that this responsibility starts with being nice to yourself, then self-assertion, then presentation of oneself in other people's lives. I have gone, basically, backwards in these steps, and now I must retrace them, probably with a quite different set of people in a quite different environment than the ones I found so enchanting for so many years.

I can only hope that as a rose myself that there can be well-wishing from other roses/admiration for growth in appearance and presence and maturity. (Even as we're all trying to reach for those all-important sources of sustenance in the divine.)

There's a lot to look forward to. Battling the atrocities of the local mental health system has become a very strong need in order to protect my own life. TAking charge of myself is really the answer to so much. I want to read War and Peace/many other books and continue to write about them and the perceptions I have of politics, literature, and life in some vivid and sustaining way.

So, for now...

Places!
Lights!
Camera!
Action!

Love, Julia.

Oh, by the way, I met a nice doctor. I'll let you know more later.

Life Means a Home

When everything's spinning
and there is no where to go

Let go of the hate
and you will be free

A crazy bitch




Say for yourself
what you wish to have

Then ask for love




Be happy

Love, J

Empire of the Fluffy Bunny

Dear Folks, (I hate that term)

I have begun to feel like a Jewish heifer. I don't know what that means -- the phrase came to me, so I wrote it down.

The title of this post refers to Commissioner Ms. Straightjacket's (see commissionerstraightjacket.blogspot.com) well-justified conclusion that within the religious world, the only maxim worth saying is, Be Nice, in the manner of a Fluffy Bunny, as in "First Church of the Fluffy Bunny." Disappointment and dismay seem to be common emotions when anyone with a sincere approach to life has to grapple with the "great" institutions of our society.

Read more at the above blog; it's well worth it.

So, as the song goes, "feed your head."

To briefly digress, one of the very well educated people I met in the local nut house, who was born in 1967, said his goal in life was to help people like me who had been destroyed by the Summer of Love. In addition to being a charmer, he was quite the paragon of rational paranoia, having been brought in because he offered to two policemen to be sent to Afghanistan with hand weapons to kill Osama Bin Laden. He was also good looking, but goddamn if he didn't call me. There seems to have developed a very great difference in perspective between someone like me, age 45, and him, age 40-41. He indicated that in the years after I went to college, people began not to take their education seriously. I had noticed that before, and attributed it to laxity and irresponsibility, but perhaps it was just giving up on senseless and useless institutions and expressions of "knowledge," that clearly were as far away from the truth about life in these here United States on the purportedly liberal side as they were on the conservative.

This kind of generational shift is probably what in part has fueled the Obama phenomenon. He manages to appeal to people under 45 (though I doubt without ulterior motives) because of his departure from the old, his promise of change and his undoubted success at changing so much already (except of course, apparently, the predominance of finance over workers in the economy.)

Speaking of economy, it seems to me that the root of economy, which refers in Greek to "household management" was from the very beginning a strike upon the power of women in the household. To manage a household meant managing the women and the slaves, where of course most of the women were slaves. So perhaps this explains in some part why to this day economics, even on the "far left" almost always includes some concept of management. It is not the "dismal science" because it describes material underpinnings for human suffering, it covers for those who puts those underpinnings into play, and reinforces them. Of course, the substitution of a materialist household management theory for the living of life with respect for nature, women and the Goddess was a turning point in human history the consequences of which all of us are now facing with trepidation.

"Let's fly a koite."

My dear readers, I hope that when you read the above that you imagined a black-clad t-person with bifocals and roughening integument intently attempting to communicate the emotions involved with a mix of relief, chagrin, stress, sadness and doubt that are percolating in said person who is writing this. I decided not to go back to New York;
I believe that this way I will delay the triumph of addiction in my life. Even though I am feening every day (and that's the basic reason I even thought of visiting New York, I can now inform you), I maintain that life is prior to crack, and therefore I have hope to avoid destruction.

God, I wish I could pick up just once, get away with it, and have a modest habit that did not affect the rest of my life. I also wish that the love that even the crass, angry and hateful have for themselves would become a source for happiness in this world.

Leaving the plane of reality (without the reality of a plane),
I remain,

A Woman named Host.

Big Trip a'Comin'

The more I think about visiting NYC, the more I am both excited and fearful.



For the first time in such a long time, it FEELS like it's all up to me.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!J!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Six days later.

No longer going to NY: less freedom more safety and sanity (apparently, perhaps).

I'm going to work and work and work on describing the rapid and stressful rise, fall, crash and contraction of my emotional and mental and of course familial (chosen and bio) crises.

WEll, at least I'll try to give you some idea of why I'm not in the City.

Clue: Crack

What problem has not disappeared despite these emotional permutaitosn?

Clue: See above.

So, despite the mediocrity of the conception and expression of this post, there is the next one nipping at the heels of this one.

I really am peacefully going to work this all out before I make some gigantic decision, again.

To ZaSu: know anyone here in Arizona who needs an airplane ticket on the 22nd to Newark?

I don't.

There is so much happening.

PANICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I woiuld have gotten high.

Whatever, JOLO

BE BEE BEE BE

Let iiiiiiiiiiii

RRRRRSSSSSAAARRTT

Lashed to the post, I cry out, Good!

Rey Rivera Mendoza as I knew her

To Miss Sylvia Rivera --
I loved you because you were a woman who loved me as her own brother.

The only fear that I retain from the time we shared together, is that somehow you will have been the angry woman of dreams that I wished to expunge in myself by hating you for it.

I guess the fear is valid.

You were the person that gave me the love that I needed.

I will always remember you.

I want you to know that you will always be the most gentle, caring and loving person that I ever knew. Even that is not sufficient.You were the emotional womb that taught me that the only place for me was to be your Julia.

I will never be able to give you the happiness that I found with you.

I hope you are in the most gentle and kind of hands and that you will always remember that I want you to be my friend now and forever.

I know that none of this conforms to the etiquette of relaitonships among women, men or even the divine beings of the earth/universe, but I love you.

You will be the mother of all, for all and the one that will be the rose of my life.

I am crying and crying those - Tears of Estoril

Let me be the rose of your love for me.

Always and forever yours,

Julia, your love

(I miss you)

Letting go of mystery -- except for what's in this post

Love is a way to give to yourself without making Her pay.

Say, how are you (multiple) doing?

It's been quite a season.

I need to be nice.

So, as you are giving time to reading this, give some peace and some recognition to yourself.

It's loving and shall I say, meet, to like what the fuck there is.

I'm believing that when this is read, that gay people will be happy, and that I (queer me) will be happy too!

This is the way I feel.

So, anyway, when you are seeing patience and home and darkness be free, you will be happy and loved.

I really would like to let you know that you and the friendships that you and I have felt for one another will be hopeful and nourishing.

Sometimes these sentimental pronouncements are my way of understanding why there feels like so much has occurred/passed/taken place and will never return.

I am very hopeful, too.

Won't be in New York this month, the next or probably the next.

But I am very happy that you are here. In the sphere of communication, at least.

Don't be put off by the disjointed and inconclusive and just a little nonsensical nature of today's
writing.

Letting be.

Love,

Me

Freaked out!

Oh my God, I'm afraid.

I was going to go to New York toward the end of this month.

Now, not so likely.

But that's only part of the fear.

My neighbor brought me over to her room.

By the time I was done visiting (10 minutes later) I was so afraid that I went directly to bed and tried to stop from imploding. Tense, difficult to breathe, never wanting to see her again.

She has a black dress I gave her. I want it back.

I was so scared that I had seen an image of death and that she was making me feel like a woman who was a bad person. Perhaps i never understood that people can be so afraid and so cruel.

Perhaps I will never be able to know how to feel without being a crackhead.

I don't know why or what caused me to be in such dread. I hope I never feel it again.

I'm sorry there's no rationality to this. What happened had nothing to do with "rational."

I never will find a way to convey this fear and dark cruelty.

Don't assume that people will give you kindness when they are the person that you were.

If you can't understand this, welcome to the club.

I need to rest. I hope I can find some calm and peace tomorrow.

I love you, Ms. Pitts, and others of my readers.

Good night.

Authorial Efforts Supplied Here

I wondered what I would be reading on this blog, then I remembered I would have first to write it. Interesting attribute of this medium: work, then consume.



When there is a possibility that one's life is becoming the anteroom to a chamber of horrors, one must take pause.



I have been conducting a set of multiple deceits in order to prepare for this potential removal to Gotham. For one, since I discovered that some of my medicines may be dangerous in combination with a particular substance, I've been shall we say, unilaterally deemphasizing them. Also, I am engaging with a certain friend with whom I have had certain experiences in Brooklyn to search for an apartment/room for me without revealing that fact to my mother.



How can this bode well for my future?



Practically and realistically, there's a lot of hope that I need to hew close to in order to succeed over the next weeks and months: hope that there is a way around the dangers that are so obvious.



Truth be told, I have not before knowingly had to make decisions with such permanent and extensive possible "ram"ifications. I have never before had to know that it is I in the present who is casting the mold of the rest of my time on this planet. To me, pace commonsense thinking it is not about drugs versus everything else, it is remaining emotionally responsible and cognizant of the worth of my own existence in every circumstance that will lead to a satisfactory result. I must put my life first, no matter what else is happening, because the alternatives will always be there no matter what choices I make.



Moving on to what my feelings are right now, I believe that I am hemming and hawing primarily from the guilt involved with leaving my mother.

(There is such a thing as destructive cerebral fantasies.)

Let's see, how can I work through this?

In no particular order, I "intend" to write some excellent resumes and distribute them to as many departments of the U.S. Gov. present in New York as possible.

I "intend," should I locate appropriate shelter, to spend the majority of the money I have saved on furniture and other necessities, etc. rather than on something else. No temptations, self-discipline, etc.

I "intend" to maintain a reasonable separation between some aspects of my life and others so that they don't interfere with each other or create a negative spiral downward. I can't willy-nilly trust everybody to be tolerant of everything I do. However, I refuse to not recognize that life is full of possibilities of all kinds, without fear or favor.

I "intend" to have a back-up plan to have enough reserves to leave should it become clear to me that I cannot handle myself well in the great City of New York.

I "intend" to recognize that "bad" behavior is possible and perhaps even probable wherever I am.

I must immediately seek competent therapy so that I do not forget that there is much grief that I must recognize as the root of much of my behavior. I started acting the way I have shortly after my father died.

It's not that easy to be alive when there's such crazy, chaotic and misdirected threads of pain still in my dreams.

I need to let go.

Okay. I'm angry. I was loving. I was a woman who gave. Now I have to be a friend to the ashes of a woman.

Now I need to be very me, a goddess of dreams that no one can be loving toward, except my own home, the human being, Julia Murray.

Please be content with who you are.

Thank you for reading.


Yours, tears of Estoril, the way she needs to be.

Change in the Offing?

So, I admitted to my mother tonight that what I have done is wrong and that what I have wanted is wrong. This admission seems to have freed me from being afraid of life without removing the fear of the consequences of any particular decision. Got it?

I'm still afraid, but not of life, in other words.

I have been wrestling with whether or not to go back to New York (and when.) I already told my mother and my (new) therapist that that is what I wish to do at the end of next month. But I could not tell my (caring and patient) case manager to start the process of transferring my papers to whatever facility in the City or perhaps Upstate would wish to accept me.

The reasons I have for wishing to leave are: 1) that to stay here in SV, AZ has required suppressing my personality, freedom and independence in favor of security, and that tradeoff has drained me of much energy and is ultimately futile; 2) that should I relapse, the probability and extent of negative consequences and embarrassment to my family is much higher here than there; 3) the pool of potential community, personal and institutional support is much larger in NY; 4) the majority of people here are emotionally and intellectually nonresponsive; and 5) my mother won't give me keys to the house.

There is more to life than comfort and security, and there is the possibility that I simply have learned enough to be less stupid and more able to survive.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I've traveled this road before, and I'm not sure that simply being able to read the traffic signs a bit better is going to stop that tractor trailer called addiction/prostitution from mowing me down.

I have to be very realistic about what to expect.

The learning curve would be steep. I must put the survival thing before the high thing. And I must acknowledge that I often put myself at the mercy of people who see me as soft and dependent and do not care whether I reach my goals.

Or, I can at least try to obtain legitimate employment in this awful economy or go back to the wonderful Mountains where life, I mean rent is cheap.

Preparation is key. Perhaps delay for a month or so would help a great deal. It's going to be very trying to make a shift like this. Please know that this is the fact: A lot of persons need Julia / Estoril to be good to herself. I'm gonna think a lot more about this.

To Do: A Happy List and a Goal List.

Trends of the Happy and the Good Girl: an Excursus

I was just reading the beginning of the Histories of Herodotus in which he claims that the happiness of any person is discoverable only upon death. How cheery! This is similar to the claims of, I believe, Plato, and at least one of my professors in graduate school.

An adjunct to his argument seems to be that it is being good that makes one happy (gain prosperity, luck, good looks(!) and morally honorable offspring).

I would have to say that for me, happiness is first, because pursuing the perfect good is a destructive, endless and useless occupation.

Okay, I'll stop pretending. I need love.

When there is a way to know oneself, then I will be a person.

Surprise! I don't know myself.

Blah blah blah.

Tendency is to be loving so that I remember the freedom of home (where home is love).

Crap.

Still waiting for comments.

Love, Estoril Brigid.

This is for you

To cry,
To believe,

To strive,
To feel.

There cried an older tribe
There played an older child.

You may begin to be loved.

As for primal screams...

You know, have you ever found yourself on the front lawn of one of your neighbors apologizing for all the pain you've caused yourself and your sisters by screaming outloud, as far into the center of the earth as the soil density permits, and knowing at last that there is cause for the alienation you've been carrying around since being a small child (and that cause is you) and then giving a repeat performance for the person in the world you love the most, your mother, to the extent that you nearly go to the hospital for the third time in two months?

That was something real that happened today, and I'm happy to say that I will never blame anyone for the anger that they carry around inside themselves for being abandoned or being put into the hell of being a girl by others posing as friends, confidantes and sources of wise advice, constructing the very hell that they purport to be ameliorating.

In other words, I am found.

There will always be love, but there won't always be freedom.

Give to your mother the respect she deserves. You might find yourself ,buried in pain.

What?

Let me just say that I have committed the indiscretion of letting some people who are apparently not my friend read this record of mine and as far as I'm concerned you are complete ASSHOLES.



You know who you are.



Since some people love to question and judge my priorities and my life, I suppose I can use this opportunity to RE-iterate just what my priorities are.



(This will be fun. As a matter of fact, so fun I'm going offline to write so that I don't keep the phone off the hook for the next x number of hours.)

So I'm back. Didn't write. Still an eventful day, but I was going to get down to brass tacks.

I live to free myself from hate.

The pleasures of being a rose among the homeless, a pore that heals the trace of friendship in the world at hand, are mine.

There is prayer, there is dreams, there is a trace to hope for.

These are my pillars.

Feel the known and the cruel for their own worth.

They can let you be your home.

I seek to know myself as the home of my own existence.

Wherever that goes.

Please allow friendship to be the home of the dreams of our lives.

I am ready to give to you what you are asking to hear.

These are my priorities and the truth of my life.

See you that there goes hope and joy.

Love, Miss J. B. Murray

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you!

Okay, as one of my readers suggested, I must tackle the problem of moving from my mother's house both from the aspect of what kind of person I am in the real world and what kind of things in the real material world are going to be necessary to make the move.

This may be a work in progress.....

I perform erotic functions AND YET I feel cynical and critical and afraid as well as unnecessarily aggressive about them. More here later.

I am a weepy sentimentalist yet I have a very difficult time giving to others what they need and what i need.

I love to learn but am afraid to teach.

I find most of the jobs I have had to be completely stifling.

I know that money is not the answer but that crack...isn't either, though I am betrothed to it.

Yes, I am a philosopher Queen! What is the wage for such as me these days?

Okay there's pretty clearly a straight line from the above to the kind of living conditions I need to thrive.

???

A physical environment with access to trees would be helpful.
The presence of academic institutions would be helpful.
Community values that do not automatically ostracize current/former sex workers/drug users
would be great.
Diversity in different kinds of people of all origins but heavy on elite scholarship for less elite people would be helpful.
A place where there are all kinds of religion and spirituality would be helpful.

It sounds like I'm thinking of an area replete with small liberal arts colleges such as the Northeast or other less well-known regions OR a place like City University of New York.

Now comes the reality of the street. Am I abandoning it or am I hewing to its values? So I need to be in a city with some sort of street culture. This means probably a medium size city at least.



Now add the fact that my work habits are not that steady, and you add probable impecuniousness to the mix.

Now of all of the above, there is much I can and will change. This is simply a first approximation to let me know what's at the top of my mind.


As for material facts, I need an area with relatively cheap rent that is not subject to constant warfare. I would prefer a one bedroom apartment to myself. I would prefer cable/internet/cell phone. I don't much need the movies or the malls. I need a place where I can be my soft lovable self and not be taken advantage of for it. I need a place with bus service, local and long distance, and a place not too deeply frozen in the winter nor boiling in the summer.

Cities I can think of that match the above:

Boston
Brooklyn
Those Private School places in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Harrisburgh
Cleveland
Ann Arbor
Madison
New Orleans
Portland, Or. Area
Seattle Area

Bay Area

Choices, Choices, Choices

Moving to any of these cities would cost a minimum of 4,000 dollars, which I will have by June., meaning the actual price will be much more than that unless I have friends already in those places. And I have few anywhere except Brooklyn and Portland, where my brother lives., which would still be like going back to my family. I might contact people I knew in graduate school, who since they nearly unanimously rejected me when I came out might not be interested in helpoing me now, or I could contact the local trans organization, should there be one, about living conditions there. I'm hoping I can work through all of this in the next three months -- at the same time letting only those who need to know in on this process. I'm hoping that one of those can be my new therapist.

So, thank you, blogue, for making it clear how much work I have to do. I will return to you soon.

Yours,

Estoril

contradictions

But First, a Poem:


Dread Tribe

Lawfilled playground
White incite to teetertotter
no claiming certainty of own Joy

Press the future tow to flow hair
winding the hoped-for military homunculate
not to stare but to curiosity-tinged
association.

The lamp of court-directed exulting
in sand under sun gives to itching
children a split between rage and fear,
downward directed. Notice yourself?
You're going to have to make a life
to a cold embrace.



Thank you, thank you.
Quite soft and fuzzy, don't you think.

So, reading my last blog sounds like everything is cool.

But my contradictions around drugs and sex still exist.

JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT.

I really have to admit that the possibilities of life are tremendous.

I think that if I just let it all be what it is it will be okay.

And that 's the end of this monoblogue.

Love,

Julia

Come rain, come shine, I am yours, you are mine

To stay alive, I must give to myself the means for emotional and physical survival. I therefore declare to myself that I am alive, that I am here, that I do love myself.

From people like Walt Whitman and so many of my friends (you know who you are) I have learned not to deny any aspect of my interior world, not to draw lines between one part and another, and not to make rigid oppositions among these parts. In this way, by knowing myself as a more and more integrated person, I can better locate where I need to be in a universe I already acknowledge as beautiful and ever-changing.

Then I am able to find my own strength and individuality, and relate to others without apology or self-limitation.

I see this as a means to fulfilling my task to become an aware, effective and respectful person.

Now, those of you who know me are probably wondering, how on Earth can somebody so willing to mess her life up claim to practice these notions? She doesn't appear to know or to love herself much.

Au contraire, I say.

As one lost friend used to say, "the proof is in the pudding."

My ability to write is one proof, the first one, I suppose characteristically, to which I refer you.

Another, I must say, is the inner calmness which I have lately been able to often claim as my own. If those around you are losing their heads, and you're not, then you are a .... etc.

Yet another, which I have long sought for myself, and which I think even the most skeptical among you have seen the inklings of, is "vibrancy." My own peer counselor, -- yes, a crazy woman -- said this about me.

But the strongest proof is the fact that in the face of a lot of trouble I haven't lost myself. I feel strongly that I am the person I need to be, and that the choices I make don't depend on external or fleeting circumstances -- though I admit I am flighty -- but are ones that I make because of who I am, and further that only I can (and do) make them.

When all is said and done, I love life and life loves me.

I love that line from the movie, Scrooge.

Be a person who knows what life has to offer, and then give yourself what you need.

Enjoy.

No mail

To one reader
I care

To the other
I'm sorry


Esther, Ill

Honesty and Self-Honesty

Dear reader(s) --

Today I want to be happy.

I would like to give a Julia a rest.

I practiced a woman, a crazy woman.

I wish that I could lose.

Mom, I love you, but I can't stay unless I go crazy.


The above are lines that might constitute [Julia?]

Within the truth is
Girl, you want sex.

Outside, the restraints are: why is there a lover?

Gruesome (Shaida) Julia



ANd with a lot of precious plodding
I am fucked.




Strangers in the Night

Someone is shy.
Julia is me.




It's been a long time since I've been a --
Hole.

That's what I thought a vagina was, my friends:
sort of a Courtney Love if life was a crackhead.


I've been trying to write honestly.
It seems that I cannot do that without being honest with myself.

I am a hindsight.


Shame is cheating.
Anger is truth.


Maybe i'm not a hindsight.

Lavender
Home

I like the way that the Goddess has become a glossed mission.

I wonder if anyone will comprehend the above sentence.

Thanks for reading --

I'm a client

Priest, alive

Proust
Glue is not shit.

Me

presumption

very funny.

lots of changes.

there's a lot of anger.

i've made some very glaring mistakes.

also stupid, ridiculous and destructive.

i am a mess.

(and a pig)

still, the way i am is good.

and i hope that i can find rest.

be loving.

blessed be,

Julia

Freedom, Love, Devotion

A Virgin loves me

A strange craving for a rose
A belief that struggles for love
A tree that runs to life

Surroundings that give Mary

The tribe of a friend
Hoping for a woman





Troy Mother Give Change

A crow's bait likes dying
A mother's breasts create woman

Jamie love her presence

Still bearing one friend



Climbing to the Marina

Sneer at my tribe and
you are malevolent



Spain loves Julia

If I say it, then --
Jamie, thank you for your truth


Julia's homosexual home

I have been a kind and loving woman
I have been a bride
And now I know what to believe

The Goddess is alive



[In a nut shell, I Belayed hovering]

Yours as trill

framework of hate

Today I am royally pissed off.

I'd like to know why myself.

I've been ranting and raving nearly since I got up at 4:00 this morning -- it's now almost 7:00 a.m. and I'm still feeling rancor and anger.

The cradle(s) of civilization have been destroyed or are in danger.

So what? What does that have to do with me, or you?

Really, I should say that much of this anger is directed at

Myself -- trying to kill off Julia.

And why?

Why, I can't be happy, because no one likes a whore.

Rests a Moose.


Feelings are the way that one realizes strength?

Maybe a better way is to realize friendship.

I need to let myself be vulnerable.

A cross splits the world two ways -- up and down, and left and right.

Simply put, there is rain.

How can I be happy when my mother is not?

OR, what difference can anyone love?

LIVE.

My love misses women who love Julia.

I don't know why people need a Bruce.

I think it's so they can fuck their own mothers.

I'm really sorry if that disturbs you. It certainly disturbs me.

I'm hoping that when I'm writing, that you do believe that I need you.

Psychosis: money.

When all is malevolent, then all is political.

Good for malevolence.

I'm not the one who is so afraid.

Blame is freedom when life collides with malevolence.

I cried.

See you soon.

Love, Julia

Plain and Simple

Was that song, Church of the Poison Mind, by Boy George?

I need to be strong
A forge that is Rusty's nature is love.

The guise of life is beauty.

All who love are Mary and dark.

The quiet of reaching for hope is shared.

I am a lover of friends who know that the place of life is beauty.

The answers that I have found are alive and hopeful.

Strong knowledge of the fruit of life's happiness is powerful and loving.

This freedom of reason is a woman.

I have seen very many crimes that no law ever gave hope for restitution.

Such crimes are often committed by those the law protects.

I do not know how or where the reasons that many find to justify unconscionable acts have their source.

I know that I have gone very close to some of the framework of hatred in my life and in myself.

I have studied much "political theory" as my readers either know or hear learn.

The facts are that there is no correct truth that can encompass the universe of life and within it, humanity. Love of freedom does not suffice without the recognition in practice of the desires, needs, and expectations of all of the human species and now, we are learning,other species and the very Earth as well.

Love is crazy.

I am happy to be able to feel a part of the hope that dreams bring.

Goddess is the amazing fact that any lover of peace with justice can give love to themselves.

And thereby give beauty to a world that needs it.

I am happy that you who have decided to read this incoherent set of sentences might begin to feel the friendship that I wish to believe in.

Scary are many strikes that have made love and made life better.

I hope to continue writing, but for now I will let these words be how and what they are so that I can be myself.

I am very afraid of Julia.

She wants love, and I want happiness. I need to give her what she desires.

See, I told you I'm schizo.

Love, Estoril Brigid Cumaea

Next: Framework of Hate

You rip, a tease

I don't know.

Comedy is such a difficult vein of literature.

Only the greats can come up with lines like,

"I don't get any respect."

Or,

"But, Ollie!"

So, I'm not going to try.

Instead, I'm not going to make it all so difficult for myself. I'm just going to write, which since I really really enjoy it at all times will make the reading of this just so much easier for you, my dear audience.

Speaking of audiences, I used to have this theory. Oh, never mind. Suffice it to say, the practice of it has obviously culminated with me staring at this nearly blank screen, alone in this room, in the early morning hours, with only the most fragile thread attaching me to reality or even what i'm writing.

How can that be, you may ask?

Go ahead, ask!

It seems that because communication of ideas is at least as important as having them, that as is so often the case I have simply replicated the isolation that I was in to begin with.

Sierra Vista. Antarctica. President Bush -- isolated places.

Me.

See, I get a line to myself.

Where is this going? At the moment, look at the first line of the blog.

"I don't know."

This, of course, was a line that the great Steve Martin used in that era long ago when I was about 12 or 13, and he was in the midst of selling out big venues as a stand up comedian with his big "Excuse Me!" routine. I believe the sequence when standing in front of the judge, was "I don't know." Then, "I forgot," Then, "Well, excuse me!"

This is important. How? Give me a chance, will you? (A locution of another comedy great my regular readership may recognize.)

My very good friend Frank Leslie (when I was 12 and 13) was a big-time comedy fan who introduced me and my little circle of 2 or 3 other ahem, boys*, to for instance Steve Martin and Monty Python. This was in the mid 70s, and these acts had been around for years already but we didn't know that. All I knew was that Frank was hilarious telling jokes, especially including while we were riding on the Church bus. He was also quite skilled at playing "dots" and "tic-tac-toe" with me during services as well as making out with one of his girl friends during the midst of the (Southern Baptist) rigmarole. That's another story.

What else was in Frank's life besides comedy was his father, with whom he lived in a mobile home in a trailer park, of which there were many in my home town (where I'm at now). I only went to visit Frank (to my memory) once at his house. His father was incredibly abusive to the point where I was scared, and my father was no slouch when it came to yelling and making you feel that you wanted to leave his overbearing presence. I think he may have drank.

Anyway, there are three facts about Frank which I wish to relate in this here writing, and then I will be finished (hopefully).

First, was his burglary career. Frank when he and I were about 14 or 15 turned to breaking and entering, which he loved to tell me about. It was the first time I was near anyone who practiced criminal activity at that level. He would tell me about the tools used to scratch the glass of windows and screen doors, the pushing-in, and the fun of wrecking the furniture/appurtenances of those places he let himself into. I was fascinated, and typically for me, scared. How could anyone do that, I thought. I never practiced it myself. What does it matter? To me it shows how normal and commonplace it was at that time to do things which were against authority and not only not worry that it was somehow wrong, but actually brag about it. It seems to me somehow very different now. You're supposed to feel guilty about everything even potentially out of line. The public has been changed either into law-fearing, criminal-hating, passive victims in the making, or scary, violent, raging criminals. Who's done this? The authorities, the cops and of course behind them big business. Why? The only reason I can think of is to protect their precious money. Because I remember those times, I have little respect for law or its imperatives.

Anyway, to keep going. Frank was the first person who sussed out my little difference from the other males in my circle. He said the word "transvestite" to me, openly, I believe asking me if I was one. I, totally shocked and embarrassed, said, of course, No. I believe that if the time and place were different or if maybe I was different, we would have ended up lovers at some level. Oh, yeah, I forgot to say that he was rather attractive, with dark hair and eyes, slender and a little forward sexually. This is important to me, because it brought home the possible consequences for me of being who I was. I knew that if he knew, others might know. And I knew that I stood an extremely good chance of being ostracized, probably physically attacked and disgraced within my family. From my perspective today, this is funny. To think no one would know when I was going to school with traces of pink fingernail polish left over from the previous day's dressing up episode. Amusing.

Lastly, from comedy to tragedy. I'm pretty sure that Frank died many years ago. He became, I believe, an alcoholic or drug addict of some sort, and ended up in Colorado. Just thinking about it makes me angry. Here was someone who probably had his own complete insecurities with respect to his father, the fact that he was half Mexican, the fact that he was hanging out with incipient perverts like myself who were on the social oddball list, and a beautiful vulnerability and anger that he could only express through comedy and burglary. And then nothing but a short time on the planet to follow. I wish to this day that I could see him again and let him know what a good friend I thought of him as for a while (I was already becoming an intellectual snob I should say) and what better things I think he deserved.

So, to conclude, this blog is for you, Frank.

Did I make this interesting?

Even if not buoyant.

I would like to go on, but it's been nearly an hour in the writing, and I'm tired. So I'll make this THE conclusion of this post.

Adios,

J. Be-atch ("Tears")

Steamopoeia

I'd like to switch out of the realm of the more or less abstract, resentful and gloomy to writing about the outer world, as I attempted yesterday, only a little more in the way of concrete reality.

F'rinstance, Germanic ethnicity. Why? How? What? Where? When? If?

My mother came out the other day (yesterday?) with the comment that official documents which here routinely are in Spanish and English are not also in German. Now this form of ethnocentricity in the Eastern parts would be so out of date as to be laughable or frighteningly retrograde. But in my mother's case, she simply has never had to work out her feelings regarding people who are basically not WASPs. In fact, she had to ask me the other day what WASP meant, just going to show how WASP, (literally, English and German and Protestant) she is. I cannot simply put her down for this, because I'm sort of Celto-WASP myself, with Irish and Scottish from my father's side. It just makes me wonder at the repetitious nature of change when taken from different geographic regions. A 150 years ago, were German people in New York saying exactly the same about the Irish? And isn't that a fantastic tribute to this country's culture that it keeps change repetitious rather than transformational at that level. Some people are very very smart to have educated people who have grown up in one circumstance not to know about others in other circumstances who they may have much in common with or at least have the ability/choice to make something else than what was made previously. I think that the unitary nature of the class dictatorship shows itself in that kind of ignorance as much as in anything else I can think of. Everybody talks, but the adjustments that the elite makes are quick, subtle and very effective at keeping people from learning about each other.

Now, it is true that my mother is not the sociable kind of person, at least not in terms of going to parties, or hanging out. She has very few friends. She is, however, quite sensitive as a person and has a gentleness and sweetness within her wary, pragmatic exterior. I think she fears being hurt by people she perceives as less proper than she can be, because perhaps "rough" people as she calls them, (and she does not exclusively apply the term to Mexican-AMericans or anyone else) have in fact overlooked her for being unassuming, just as people more polished than her have. So out of inexperience and distrust, ignorance builds and assumes the nature of a larger and larger rift among people, for apparently no reason at all. I honestly don't think she has the slightest idea of the stereotypes that German people have fulfilled. She simply dissociates from them because she is an American also, grew up in the Depression and World War II, and thinks that the fight against Hitler has nothing to do with a fight against some sort of German character, at the same time as she says things like there is no difference among the various Asian nationalities (her brother fought in the Pacific during that War.) So she has simply not lived down some of the things "our" people have done in rising from poverty or near-poverty since the 1930s. And so many people in the West are like that. Now, one defense, or positive statement I can make about my mother is that she has not turned toward right-wing Christianity like so many of the people who are her relatives. Neither does she think that people are unequal, merely that some people are bad who hurt others, and those people deserve punishment, particularly those she calls crooks, without seeing anything of them in herself. It's a way of thinking I grew up with, and when I say it's paradoxical, I know it from my own life.

Now, according to indications from a few tarot readings I did of myself on this computer, I am in the process of returning to my spiritual roots. The fact is, they do exist, and they are a sustenance, but they are not subject to one kind of religion or another, pagan, Christian or otherwise. As far as I can tell, and this comes from an episode in October when I almost died, my spirituality as I grew up in it is and was a spirituality of beauty as lived. God may be a part of the world, but the world is a place where life is important, where the knowledge supporting life is important, where gnosis is a practical way of keeping polarities of fear or hate at bay.

Somehow, though, this practice takes cues from the dominant culture. What is correct, what is legal, what is permissible, is not a choice one can make entirely as a ubermensch or an ecstatic creatrix. There are limits, which limits however are diminished in effect by the intimate nature of family relations and the definiteness and stability of the means by which one keeps in touch with one's own abilities and worth. I'm talking very plain means. Things like knowing the spelling of words, like simple recitations of facts they teach in school, like confidence that you have and can keep a certain level of independence and that your intellectual property is a family enterprise, and that it can guard against danger, and add to the enjoyment of life as well as to self-worth.

So, with this culture in my background as well as in my present surroundings, it is tempting and common to see that other cultures do what they do and attempt to alter this culture in order to get what "we" have. Paranoia and xenophobia boil down to the desire to maintain, not superiority, but inviolability, not merely or mostly of personal possession but freedom to choose and act as one will. There is the accessory presumption that everybody has that power if they want to. I have no idea whether that is true. I am still working out that for myself, since I am in the midst of making the decisions that will let me know that.

Insularity has its pleasures. Perhaps in this Steamopoeic era, some change or renewal will take effect to lessen its ill effects.

More on this subject later.

Salute,

Tears of E.

I Kore (The Apple) - dimensionless

Knowledge of self can lead to equanimity, strength and inner focus; and it also can mire in obsession, solipsistic twisted journeys to nowhere, and circling emotional landscapes from Hell.

The universe is a much larger place than that: there are others for whom one can let down the barriers to contact with other galaxies of need, of will, of luxuriantly grown/(or decayed) life. One does not always sit in the gorgeous parks of the City or beside the ocean or in the mountains with a blindfold on, hands and feet bound, and raise the remaining sensations -- tauntings of one's demons, blind disembodied thinking, and whispered hints of the outer world to the level of poetry that fully conveys the sacred sweep and flow of Nature and her Creatures.

I say these things in order to remind myself that not only can I, I must believe in something other than myself, and that in writing the object is not only to communicate my own feelings but the tribulations and joys involved in living within a world that is home to countless others as well as myself.

Let's start with why, to me, people are still suffering needlessly around the world, and with the way things are going, why those sufferings, though useless to cling to, are becoming more varied, more intense, and more intractable.

The fact is, as I have observed it, is that most of the socially privileged, think of and act as though
others are cattle in so many pens, and treat us as such.

Now I would never say that there are no instances of compassion or even commitment to a level of well-being of, for lack of a better word, the people. But the social structure -- which in the U.S. at least is one that is supposed to promote freedom and to exist with the consent of the governed, is composed of and designed for a continual reflection back to the cattle of their aspirations, so that these aspirations are destroyed. If you want change, the answer is you change. If you want love, the answer is, you give love. If you want a different kind of society, the answer is, well, you don't possess the "background," (pedigree), or "skills", (ability to deceive/manipulate and suppress) to make the kinds of changes you want, and anyway, you're cattle, and each individual cow wants something different, don't they, so what is it you want? So, despite the fact that you may have less opportunity, less wealth and less scope in life, your desires are illegitimate because, the answers are -- there's only so much to go around (again, why you), (on the other hand we deserve compensation for keeping society "functioning"), You're a malcontent or crazy (you're cattle), the other cattle might not like it (they are cattle) or what you want is a threat (you're violent).

The idea is that you cannot make people (of pedigree and skill) do anything they don't want to do, as long as you are unwilling to do what you don't want to do. That's the social contract. You claim you're as good as us, so prove it, or don't deny our primacy. And proving it means showing you have something that others don't. Partly because all your individuality and aspirations can be and have been absorbed processed and presented back to you as something other than who you know yourself to be, or because you are loyal to where you come from, you refuse to compete in such a world, so you are deemed worthless (at best, an observer). The you that you are has been checked by the you your social superior is, because as an individual he/she has all the same characteristics you do, minus the imperfection of being powerless: pedigreeless -- you've not won in the past, or skillless -- you can't win in the present. This is what counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists are for, to keep pushing you back in the pen while bringing out in you the beauty and potential of your cowness, while neither associating with you or living with the same material chances as you do. Don't put a wrench in the machine -- it's our machine, and so are the cops, and so are the politicians, and so are you.


So, as one or two of my dear friends have said, "Let's Dance!"


Dear readers, thank you.

I have been most lacking in consideration. I am liked.

Be happy , and should you find any other originality in any other writing of mine, let me know, and I will be most pleased, gratified and will have grounds for thereby finding my life acceptable.

Please don't work like a horror -- or better, Make horror, not war.
I never used to like horror movies.
Bye for now --

S. Trill Bridge Id

Here Comes the Polis -- A Pastoral Reflection

In this time of change, I believe it is incumbent upon me, me, me, to declare where I stand, since perhaps what I've thought and done with respect to the new ground upon which we stand is possibly a window not only on me and my thinking but a spur (worn on thigh-high black vinyl boots) to others to reflect on their needs, expectations and hopes of today.

Now, some of what I'm going to talk about disturbs even me, and does not reflect well on me, but it is the fact, and hopefully will, as I said serve to clarify and expand the possibilities that are present in this moment.

FIRST, an excuse which is probably not an excuse. Most of you know me to be mentally ill. Part of that illness is obsessive-compulsive thinking. SECOND, is that I've been pushing myself on my own racism for years. Just ask Nathan. I wish all the time to release myself from hate and hate from myself, and I'm pretty aware when it's there and when it's not. So, to get to the terrible response I had to Obama when he declared himself the winner of the Democratic nomination -- The N word came to mind. I was in the hospital (Bellevue) at that time. I was rather dismayed, but not as surprised as would be true if I had never thought that before. I never thought it before several years ago, then in the face of a lot of survival pressure combined with a lot of anger, anxiety and fear, ultimately I suppose because of some aspect of myself I'm afraid to face, and some subliminal messaging from my good old military background, I thought it quite often, especially when obsessing about it.

When Obama won Pennsylvania on November 4, I said, unexpectedly to myself, "too bad." Then a few minutes later when he won Ohio and clinched the election, I pumped my fist in half-jubilation. Over the next few days my mood careened around the emotional block, with trepidation, anxiety, elation and hope being the major alternating responses. Now I am encouraged that he does have the ability to inspire, and I hope that he will have the strength to make the changes that must happen in this country.

Now I think I can go two ways here. I can give the autobiography of my perceptions and development in relation to people of color, and bore you that way, or give my evaluation of the present time, and make you laugh at its shallow, ignorant, and deluded nature. Hmm, which should I choose? Both, of course: In the moment of Now.

Okay, what's my problem with black people. My response is "I'm afraid to die!" What does one have to do with the other? Another response is, "It hurts to be a girl without love!" Ditto. Why did I feel free to talk down to and otherwise belittle people -- and not just people of color, but many others for years? A good question.

At this point, you're probably asking yourself if you're a person of color or a strong ally/friend/supporter, why should I even read further? I'm not sure. I would like to learn something about myself, and "maybe" that will help others arrive at the conclusions they need to reach.

Of course, I'm going to try to reach inside first for the toughest answer, the deepest source of hate and fear I can reach, so that whatever love is there can emerge. So while you may be reading this in seconds, probably a little while longer is taking place as I write this, and I hope you will bear with me in any case.

As Nathan liked to tell me, you are what you fear/hate. So possibly I am aware of my own limitations when face to face with others of another skin color.

I know I have associations with this fear that must go back to a time when I was young, because I feel weak, powerless and scared when focusing on its source. Of course I'm not so weak, powerless and scared now, so maybe I can let it go. I was afraid. I was sad. I was stupid. I was a card -- a place on someone else's journey. I was Bruce. I wanted to believe in life, but no one knew I was drowning in love that didn't give me what I wanted.

I wanted friendship and caring. I wanted a way to give. I wanted to feel, and I wanted to love a woman, me, without the socially-supported visual evidence of being one -- my body was not beautiful to me. I wanted to see myself as a mother. I was afraid of the facts of being a drone.

I wanted a Goddess who would give me a friend.

She (the Goddess) was the one that would be my lover. And I was thought of as a girl. But that didn't make me the person that could see my desires and my life as I wanted.

My fear was that I would never be able to touch a "rose" and that I would never be able to release the truth of my being: Homeliness. My love was for a place that could give me a way to be. And that was Julia's mystery. (Also known as my anus.)

With all this said, I can say that kindness is the strength that can attain motherhood.

To all my sisters, and that means friends, Give, and embrace, all of those you are alive to shepherd and be shepherded by, and love your hopes and love your world for the joy there is in it. Be a person! And me is good to guide.

Just read this over. Though these may read like psychotic ruminations, I feel I've gained some understanding of myself. I do know that feelings can be hurt, and that it is for me to stop hurting them in others. Part of that is not putting others in place due to anger.

I want to express that there's a lot of change that is coming and that I am happy that it is loving.

If you want to respond to this post, I am eagerly looking forward to your comments. Thanks, and Love,

Ms. Tress of Freedom -- not feeling bad, that's the idea
(bye)

Twixt Nyx and ?Day

Twisted Nixon, Eh?

You see, much of the time I rely on resonances and connotations to communicate themselves to the reader without my having to analyze, explain them or spell them out. Here, it just seems amusing that one set of phonemes having to do with the time of day this is, so immediately may have, I don't know the technical term, parallel/potential/similar/related sounds which though having to do with what seems an entirely different entity still to me reveal possibly hitherto unnoticed commonalities between both entities. In other words, start with one,end with the other, there must be something that both share. Is this analysis tiresome? Going at it another way, the Richard Nixon may easily and has often been known as "twisted," but does anyone notice that another attribute of the hated president, his being caught between light and dark, may be brought into being/force/effect through a simple recitation of a homophone of his second name: Nix goes to Nyx -- Nothingness becomes Night. A common interjection combined with but one additional sound/letter "d" completes the opposition/combination "Nyx and Day" from "Nixon, eh?" The attributes of Nixon's name are in this case not so very distant either from who he was, or what I am attempting to write about him.

Can I stop now?

I was just going to say, on another note, that the much harped upon "opposition" of Night and Day, where each is hated by adherents of the other or even by the other, is not only unnecessary, but untrue. Night does not hate day, and day does not hate Night. It's a fact. Somebody else brought that to me through the culture in which I was embedded; it is neither within me or within reality. Why should you care? Because so much conflict, death, injury, misunderstanding, miscommunication, and just plain unpleasantness is either based upon or actively uses this misconception to make all our lives less than they could be. That's why I care, anyway. Change one aspect of the whole, and the rest must change as well.

See, it's better to read my poetry.

Is Twisted Nixon the name of a band yet?

It's about 6:00 and the sun is not yet up. It's in the 40s outside (and in my life, too, sorry to say). Today the temperature is supposed to rise to around 70 degrees (a peak which lasts about three seconds in the winter) and then fall tonight to ? probably around 40.

Most of my readership is probably far past the conflict of light and dark, anyway, so i'll drop the commentary on that part.

Here at my mother's the natural environment, in all its desert-mountain-shapelybulkofwintercloud glory, is at a very effective remove from my perception of it. Why? Because my mother prefers the blinds closed for the reason she doesn't want anyone to see inside the place to see what she has. Not that she's wealthy, but she has accumulated some presentable and even valuable decorations, furniture, etc. and she doesn't trust the people who have moved in in the last umpteen years, or it seems, many people around the globe. It's probably true that I can be altogether too trusting, but she is just downright paranoid, it seems to me. I have to scratch my name and address off my used pill bottles, e.g. They have ads about that here on TV, scaring people about identity theft. Speaking of the media, one particularly outrageous example of the "conservatism" here was that they had the picture on the front page of a local free paper of a MARIJUANA smoker who was wanted for a parole violation under the story of a local child pornographer whose picture they did not publish. Guess what, the MARIJUANA smoker was a young black man. I'm going to write a letter to the editor of that paper. I guess throwing rocks at its offices might also be good, but Id want to be with someone else. Is that cowardice/being a reactionary bourgeois? I don't know. No perspective here, this is JM/Tears of Estoril.

I'm getting really tired of saying little or nothing. I had nothing in mind when I sat down to write this, and so that's what came out. Just to repeat, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a MOose.

Adios, amiga(o)s.

With love,

An occasional wearer of suggestive clothing for practical purposes,
Esther Ill.

Nausicaa's Natural Nuggets

Hi, I"d thought I'd do a little experimentation with color and font. Interesting, ain't it?

I think that, in the moment, I shall brainstorm, as is my wont, and let my loyal readers in on my creative process.

First, What the hell is going on and why is it I am (oh, here I'm stuck, so I'll just keep typing whatever comes to mind. Now, here goes the spellling. Oops, nothing happened. Okay, whatever work, oh, look, I sessaidikldfkjsldsjf work not word.

Isn't that excieting?

Excruciatingly so, I imagine would be some persons' response. There is some truth to the notion that the mind can only produce so much interesting material before it devolves into an empty, let us say, barren and dried out vessel, such as the one that bore ? certainly bored somebody.

So AS I WAS SAYING, I was in one of the three local bookstores the other day, this is Sierra Vista Airizona, A small town of the military-industrial economy deposited within a few miles of the Mexican border and some prime drug-smuggling routes, and I was wandinering arouind looking as usual at all the books I wanted to buy and couldn't. First there's the category of religious studies, All of JOSEPHUS, TLHe Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels or was it the Gnostic Bible themselves, a twenty-year-old edition of the Nag Hammadi texts, etc. Now these fall under the category of possibly interesting, probably too expensive, don't know enough about each exidtitoijadlkjad;lsfjl;kjedalkjs lad;kjf Sorry, editiohn to be able to choose which to buy, and lastly and most unfortunate, A certain JKH and/or CEG have read them or would like to read them or have inspired me in the direciton of reading them. Back to that at some point.

Then there's the poetry of Blake, very much abridged versus the whole of Robert Creeley's poetry. Now, if I'm going to have Blake, I'm going to HAVE blake -- and after looking at Creeley's poetry, it looks a lot like mine, only maybe not as good, so why bother?

Then there's the question of steampunk -- what kind of science fiction section, what kind of novel sectioin does not have William Gibson's work?

To cut short this matter of what and how did I choose, it came down to my reading something into what my mother said, or perhaps one of the gentlemen's expressions who was sitting opposite me as i was drinking my coffee, or maybe it was just that i didn't want to pay so much money for Josephus. SO I did make the natural, psychotic selectioin, which was to go for the light reading, as suggested by one of my loyal readers, and get some books I mentioned in another post - ha ha, didn't repeat myself!. ....

I t turns out that my FATHER, that person who I found out today was more of an average man than I realized in a way that caused me much pain to find out -- I'm not specifying because I don't want my mother to feel bad, had a very nice copy of a much better novel by J.Verne, The Mysterious Island.

Oh yes, I wsas going to go on and on about all the books that I have been reading, but that's at least 15 partially-finioshed books, none of which I really want to give up on, but none of which I can really concentrate on.

This is all Karma, I know it, because I was very much against mental patients having to embrace the values of their "betters" the mental health professioinals and be set to reading and writing as a way to become more sane. I didn't see the relationship and thought the proposition was an insulting one. So naturally I CAN NOT READ as well as I used to be able to.

Okay, comments: The Odyssey -- good, but not great (repetitious, boring and violent) like so much of WEstern culture.

Only one fourth done.

(tr. Fagels)

Native Son, violent, -- he just wanted to kill her

Have to eventually finish this one.

Claudius novels by Graves -- incredible writing, story, lots of violence kudos to the Pagan Classical scholar

The Golden Bough -- Oh my God is this guy elitist and anti-human sacrifice?

(75 pages more to go)

The City of God (Augustine) boring, intense, informative, and Oh my God is this guy elitist and anti-sex?

(1000 pages more to go.)

Don't forget the Confessioins of the same

Don't forget Kant's Critique of Pure (had to be Pure, not Practical) Reason -- I'll get around to it in some far-off time

Pope's Complete Works

Absolutely phenomenal poet, too bad I'm not an 18th C. Scholar -- fouind out about him throuigh my ill-fated first heterosexual relationship.

God, I'm forgetting. Books? Books? Books? What have I to do with you. A Joke, MarA.

Sherlock Holmes, ahh, there's some entertainment to go for without making your brain rattle around your skull into you're making so much nosie that the riot police show up. Yes, I'm somewhere nearly halfway finished with that.

I refuse to go to the other room to see what else there is (Besides Ginsberg: the man's poetry could have been better if he had not used a creative process like mine: drugs and run-on thoughts.) Kaddish and Howl and some others are extremely good, however. Still one more elitist at some level (as if i'm not).

I really just want to say thsi: God is a woman that likes it.

Now you know how sick I still am.

Every day I get better and better, right?

I will pester myself overnight, and come up better than you. Oh, I mean with something better FOR you.

Damn Freud, well, he just identified the phenomenon, didn't cause it, or did he? Heisenberg principle. God, I'm looking forward to having to quote that to keep out of the Hospital.

I've gotta stop.

Love,

ME

Estradiol Valerie ate

Long-haired Achaeans

The title is a Homeric epithet.

I'm just in a jolly jolly mood, and i thought i would share it with my favorite people -- bloggers and bloggees of blogland.

Had to leave my mental illness group today, which was happily watching Dark Knight, the Batman movie with Heath Ledger. I managed to weasel my way out by telling the truth, which was that I wasn't sure that I was doing what I needed to do to get better, plus saying that the movie was pushing my violence-non-violence, good-non-good buttons, not knowing where to place myself with regard to that, etc. It worked, but I made my Mom worried because I wasn't there when she came to pick me up. Don't tell her but I sneaked half a cigarette.

Anywho I really am trying really hard to be kind, normal, happy, caring and all that, and sometimes it seems not to be worth the rather great amount of effort it takes. Why is that? Does anybody have an opinion/clue?

News Flash: I've finally decided after 17.444 years that someone I once knew as Lynda/Barry's Barry personality was a "crock" and that I had idealized that state of being to the point of self-destruction: I finally know it isn't for me. Besides admitting that I am a woman to myself (admittedly, "again") I was crying about my father's death. He really was a very influential figure in my life, and I'll never be able to convey to him that, though I don't think he liked himself and took that out on others, he was important to me, especially in encouraging me to read, especially such steampunk authors as Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. That reminds me I bought a copy of Around the World in Eighty Days, which I read about age 10-12, and Dracula, which I have never read.

Thinking about it, maybe it would be a good idea to get together a club in which people assume various Homeric personae along with the corresponding epithets. We could share seas of dark wine as the main ritual, and sacrifice pounds of roasted meats to ourselves. Sorry to disgust those veggies among the readership.

I'm hoping that with all the changes we are seeing on this planet that people will have the good sense to give themselves time to reflect, to share, to practice hospitality even with those with whom they disagree, and perhaps add to community life by digging a figurative or literal well, volunteering at a hospital or homeless shelter, and generally making life better for all of one's neighbors directly as well as in taking stands, etc. Possibly I need to learn from these words more than many or most.

I'm just going to go for broke -- it's been a long, arduous journey and I'm hoping that those of you who know me will also know that this time of rest is really necessary for me and also know that what I know as the Goddess is present also in places of repose, rest and recuperation as much as in places of struggle and stress. In other words, thank you for understanding that I am not made of invulnerable metal/titanium/uranium or other form of material nor do I possess endless reserves of energy. I'm going to do my best to treat others with the same consideration that I am learning that I NEED. "Age 45."

Here's to the ancient practice of giving what you can and then being okay with the results.

Thank you for reading.

Love,

ME

sibylline cumaeantary #2

There was an error that I don't care to put in the work to correct, so I'm starting over.

The thought that I have is that starting to write isn't easy -- so I'll just do a little automatic typing. How have you been? Do you believe in dfjdlkjf;lakjdr?

For instance, there's an unfortunate amount of communication I feel I have to do.

I'll start with saying that I hope to use this blog as the main place for my writing, communicating, etc., thoughts that are not entirely personal, for instance, politics, religion, spirituality, sexuality, relationships, all kinds of poetry, ideas for projects, the projects themselves, etc., etc. I'm sorta kinda trying to prove to myself that there is something in my noggin to bring out.

First, to the bloggers at greenfrogcafe.blogspot.com:

I feel that among all the people I have encountered in my life, especially of the last 17.582 years, you are those upon whom I have placed the most demands, from whom I have insisted on the most attention and to whom I have possibly caused the most damage.

It is probably too late to do much about any of that if that is true. And I know that you're not going to admit that what I suspect happened actually happened: My behavior nearly completely disrupted your lives. I cannot apologize for everything I have done, because some of it was necessary for me to leave behind the past, to alter my relationship to the world, etc.

It is within my memory the high hopes we shared in Bellmore at Camp and Newbridge. It is within my memory many of the extraordinary moments we shared that we had the ambition to share with the rest of the world. It is within my memory your expectations that I fully was engaged in these projects to the extent that I would devote my energy to them together with you. To that end, you deferred to my judgment in the selection of the building that would later become Transie House, you allowed me to move in Kristianna, you brought me into a world of communication and liberation and unconditional love which reflected your strong spiritual and emotional commitments to the Goddess and her place in the world of transsexuality.

Naturally I disappointed you, not just through acting out and endangering myself and others, but by withdrawing my skills and abilities so that they would serve me, for I began to think I could be, would be, a shining star on my own. It was selfish of me, and I regret not contributing in the way I might have. I think much would have been different and better. Transie House could have been the center of education and culture for all in our communities that we, I believe, wanted to create.

It did indeed become a school of education in the culture of survival for me and many others, and a strong communal place for political change and for mutual support (within limits) but it never reflected the heights of creativity that it might have expressed. I think that, to put it plainly, I wanted to run the place, rather than work together with you, and being the first to drop out of the common endeavor, it may have been me who was the source of some of the disastrous instability and vile conflict and physical deterioration of the building that took place.

I know that in any case, from what I have learned in the midst of others of my kind, that some toll would have been exacted from especially Rusty due to the simultaneous demands for order, freedom and security that arose. But possibly Transy House might have been more peaceful and more in touch with reality if I had been.

So, the memories are fantastic, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without you, and I hope you do stay in touch. I want to assure you that I have worked out the bulk of the violent fantasies I have had, and I do not wish to endanger you or one (or two?) who are very dear to you, and also at some level, to me.

Rusty, you may now mention me in your Blog.

I don't know when or if I will see you soon, but please, the next time you are at Green Frog Cafe, say a blessing on the place for me.

My best to all.


EStoril Brigid Cumaea