“

For the rest of your life, you will get tired. You will shy away from risk. You will cathect to comfort. You will watch lots of television. It’s a gentle process, and it’s completely unstoppable. We will lose energy. The universe will end. We can’t stop the Great Heat-Death of the Universe.

But by God, we are University of Chicago students. And we can fight.

”

—

http://ishum.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/drew-dir%E2%80%99s-graduation-speech/

- Student graduation speech to the University of Chicago class of 2007 by Drew Dir (Manual Cinema, Court Theatre).

I was at the 2007 convocation, as an ex of mine graduated that year, and was blown away by Drew’s speech. I don’t even remember who else spoke. Go read the whole speech, imagine Drew’s really charming and tongue-in-cheek delivery. It still totally rules. 

the apples I bought today. 

things feel very surreal lately, the passing of time, god, was that only a week ago? has it already been two years? eight?—the picking apart of the true, the good, the real, from the dreamt, the imposed, the constructed. I walk through the door to a courtyard and enter a bedroom. I reach for the curtain of a theater’s exit and find myself at home. Days are nights and truths are lies. A stranger turns to me and says yes, I think you’re the one for the job. There is always work to be done, not merely the flushing of my mind through my eyes and through my bleeding nose. Readying for take-off: the acceptance of death. Finally, finally, my life begins its striding, true to nature.

Please, please, please, please don’t die.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, all of the terrible things I’ve said about you– because while the truth is still the truth, and intent still intent, anger anger and damage damage–at this moment this is more important, to live. 

I may not want you in my life, but I want you alive.

I got new glasses today. I had my updated prescription put in frames that I bought at the Brown Elephant for three dollars. Strange to think that perhaps whoever once wore these is now dead, or simply walking around with different eyes.

“It’s good to challenge people on race and sexuality and other issues where there’s prejudice,” says Alyson. “If knowing my boys encourages anyone to think a bit more deeply about how we label people, then that’s just great as far as I’m concerned.”

- Alyson Kelly on the subject of her twin sons James (“black”, gay) and Daniel (“white”, straight). 

There are a number of things about this that are interesting and complicated, one of which being the fact that Daniel, the “white” twin, was the one consistently beat up at school due to the racism of his fellow students. I’m not sure quite what that says about race issues today, but I’m willing to bet it includes something about the insidious nature of contemporary racism. Aggressive and subtly bigoted middle school boys are perhaps less likely to lash out at someone they can tell at first glance is “black”, maybe because they are enraged by the experience of initially viewing someone as a peer, assigning a certain set of (higher) expectations, and then learning they’ve been “tricked” by treating someone “non-white” as “normal”. This is something I kind of wish I knew more about, because it is fascinating and upsetting. 

Something this makes me tangentially think of is a specific attitude that sometimes gets directed at bisexuals (especially men) who are initially assumed to be straight. This is way, way, less serious, and please don’t misinterpret me as complaining, because I am extremely lucky in this regard, but I think it relates to something similar about the way 

As a relatively femme bisexual woman who dates men far more often than women, people generally assume I’m straight. That seems reasonable enough, since I stopped shaving my head a year or two ago (while I still did that, everyone assumed I was a lesbian and/or in a punk band), and typically show up to social events with a man in tow. People don’t typically know I sometimes get involved with women until I tell them, they meet one of said women, or they facebook friend me. (I’ve been listed as interested in both men and women since I joined facebook in 2005, but even then people are often surprised when it comes up in conversation. I wonder if they are simply feigning surprise?) When people do figure it out, it’s typically not a big deal at all, especially in the 20-something hipster artist circles that I run in, and I don’t consider it a big deal myself. I am obviously very fortunate; I’ve been open about being bisexual for… probably about eight years now, and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually been harassed for it. However, there is this interesting thing that happens sometimes: people who are totally not weird or bigoted towards their gay friends– their obviously, openly, stereotypically gay friends–will be super weirded out and get really uncomfortable and make comments or ask questions that are borderline offensive. There’s something confusing about a person who has no problem or visible discomfort with the friends that they registered as gay from the moment they met them, but then is clearly disturbed by someone they had considered and treated as “normal” revealing themselves as “non-straight”. Hmm.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and didn’t intend to write anything here when I posted the link, but hey, there are my two cents for the moment.

The monkey’s paw is clenched in my fist. No, no, this isn’t what I wished for. The vengeful heart will get its due in pain. 

The poison you tempered in my breast perhaps has slipped in through your ear, perhaps when we are dead it will not matter who is snake and who is garden, who fain would sleep. Perhaps I choke back sobs, or the slashing of a knife. I slowly disassemble my body, tuck the iron shards into the beds of men who treat me with more kindness than you could maintain in the face of our mutual folly. 

I look down at the bowl of your face and want to smash my collarbone with a sledgehammer. I want to kick you in the fucking teeth for your insolence. My anger, my hot tears, solve nothing, and most days I have learned this. My life continues on without you, and I typically wish you well. 

I pity you. I pity you for both the suffering you cause, and the suffering you endure. This was not the revenge I wanted, this terror, this panicked observation of still-unfounded death. I wanted you to slowly become whole, happy, and utterly separate. To fall asleep, healthy and content, in the bed of your gentle wife, and rarely, when the moon is right, bolt up in the night, sweating and weeping, spitting your apologies to my absence. This drives you to be even more kind to those around you, more thankful for the generosity of time and human affection. 

This, this one potential truth, wriggling in your hands, this is all wrong. 

To my beautiful daughter Samantha on her 10th birthday, today

November 23, 1997

May you find your passion, treasure it and keep it close to your heart. Peace, wisdom, beauty and creativity are already yours.

With boundless love,

Mom

Unsent birthday card. Year unknown.

Inside, a drawing of a green star, with happy birthday! written across.

I had a dream not too long ago, I was standing by a window in a school, reading a green xerox copy of a poem by the sunlight. I had to read it, some assignment or another, and as I did I realized you had written it. I don’t remember details, except for the first word, A N G E L, spaced bold and above the rest. I’m pretty sure it was a good poem.

No date. Excerpted.

Call me Ishmael. If you are reading this letter I’m either dead or in college.

I swear the stamp is my RA’s.

I miss everyone back home, you especially. Nothing in this world is quite like conversing with a member of the opposite sex that stimulates you intellectually.

My only advice to you is to take a deep breathe and remember that comedy is easier on the heart then drama.

PS: Never laugh underwater.

————————-

Hey!
Been trying to meet you.
Must be the devil, between us,
or whores in my head
whores at the door
whores in my bed, but
hey
where
have you
been?
If you go, I will surely die.
We’re chained.

A playbill, Phantom, New York City, December 2003.

The first dollar I ever earned making art.

Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, New Orleans.

The Nashville Chamber Orchestra, Valentine’s Day 2004.

Every school play I acted in as a child. The Junior Prom.

The New York City Ballet, the Nutcracker, December 9th 1995. Carsick on the way to the city, my Uncle Mike’s youthful laughter. 

Chunks of pages of a paperback edition of 1984, found on the floor of my high school, torn apart in a rage.

A valentine from a dead man. 

The invitation to a 17th birthday–now, the invitation to a wedding. Time, time, time.

Two glass marbles, and I can’t remember why.