Quill or be Quilled

So yes, transphobic stuff...

2012-01-12T20:23:00.000-08:00

No.
I try not to make too many quick statements on the many transphobic goings on in the world. There are too many of them, and for every Girl Scout trying to boycott cookies, there are a thousand less-noticed slaps in the face trans people deal with every day. Someone uses tranny in a dismissive way. So-called allies who want to use me to educate themselves about trans issues and use me for legitimacy, only to not take me seriously on women's issues. Someone mistakes an expression of outrage for "hot tranny mess."

I have heard women tell me "I thought you were hot, then I realized you were trans," as if going out with me would have been as ludicrous as dating a gorilla. I have heard gay men tell me I shouldn't make a big deal of it, that they don't believe me, and that everyone has a feminine side.

I have been to the various LGBT centers and seen trans people of color automatically treated like drug addicts and criminals, sometimes when they were applying for jobs.

And, with all this, we haven't even addressed transphobia in non-queer space.

So, I have learned to keep close to myself, my friends, and thoughts of better days. Were I to shed a tear for everyone who rightfully deserves one, there would be nothing left of me.

My comfort and weapon is my pen, with which I shall unleash all the truth and beauty that I can possibly summon. I shall try to weave dignity with my poems and my songs, and my worlds will be worlds in which the cruelest punishment is not reserved for those of us who are different, and someone, somewhere, has the means to make a better place.

And for my family, my friends, I will teach them everything about fighting I know, with the wisdom to use the techniques wisely, but without hesitation should they be attacked.

That is what I can do, most all I can do right now. The soul is not limitless, which is why sometimes I turn away from yet another ugly, horrible thing.

Realigning...reinventing...

2012-01-12T16:37:00.000-08:00

I've always thought of myself as a writer--except when it came to profession, where I have thought of myself as "professor." It is a nice title, but it leaves me a little empty. After much thought, I realized I am a writer not just by interest, but by profession, and being a professor, which I love and enjoy, is actually my secondary job. Knowing my teaching gig is the solid paycheck that propels the rest of my career (or, perhaps re-discovering this), sets me in proper perspective and on a good track to move forward!

This came up when I decided against applying to a full-time tenure-track developmental English job. I'd basically be kissing my writing days good-bye. I have lived lean, about the same way I did as a grad student, not because I have to, but because I chose this way to write. So I shouldn't worry about others having more success than I do, or whatever whatever. I am a writer, following her heart and passion.

New Performance Work

2011-12-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone is having an excellent holiday season!

I am so excited! My health is coming back and I have some performances in the works. I'll be at Claremont in late Feb, Chicago at the AWP in March and Syracuse University in April. I am sketching out a new piece based on some of my experiences during the downtime.

I am realizing the value of conflict and resolution (as opposed to not rocking the boat until one either explodes with pent-up frustration, or smothers oneself in helpless silence). When violence is used against us, it often poisons our perception of what should be a healthy part of the human psyche--anger.

Anger is not inherently a bad thing, nor is outrage nor expressions of self-worth. But abuse takes this perspective away from us, since these impulses were used against us as weapons. Someone else's rage...someone else's ego or opinion, obliterated ours. And we never want to be like that, so we suppress these emotions within us. Anger scares us, we don't deserve self-worth, we aren't confident enough for outrage.

But if we are to be anything other than victims, or shells, or children, we need to experience these emotions, and learn what our abusers did not--how to responsibly and constructively incorporate them into our thoughts, feelings and actions.

That's what my new full performance piece will be touching on--wish me luck!

Thinking back...

2011-11-19T18:39:00.001-08:00

Translation is tough work. Translating is poetry is often more difficult than writing poetry from scratch. One of my most difficult writing assignments was for a Los Angeles Zen Buddhist Temple. The head priest asked me to translate part of the service into English from Japanese. My Japanese is not that great, and neither was his English, but I think this lack of explicit understanding actually helped us focus on the spirit and meaning of the passage.

When we were finally finished, I asked him how long this translation would be used. He looked up at me, and gave me the most wonderful confused look before he said, "Forever, of course."

One of the best moments of my writing career.

Writing update!

2011-10-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
I hope you had a nice summer. I had a very busy one, and there's still a lot to be done! I will be speaking at Syracuse University on November 14. Also, I have an essay in Transfeminist Perspectives, coming out super-soon from Temple University Press.

The poetry has been sporadic, but fruitful, and I have some new stuff ready to fly. I am working with the Hummingbird Review on a mini-series of poems for their forthcoming issue--so excited!

The most exciting news is that I am finally having a book published, with many of the best essays, performances, and poems that I have written so far. Some work has been previously performed or published, but much of it will be completely new. I am ecstatic at how the pieces are fitting together. I can't share the publisher right now, but stay tuned! :D

Take good care, everyone!
*HUG*
Ryka

Just a bit from He Mele A Hilo

2011-08-24T11:02:00.000-07:00

from Chapter 14

Get fishermen and get fishermen. Oh yeah, and get fishermen, too.

You see, get fishermen who just like go to say they go fishing. They get the right poles, the right spinners, the right lines. They bring the beer and the flashlights and what not. And they talk about this bait and this place and that and all that stuff so that people who don’t know fishing think that they real good fishermen.

And that’s really what they like. They like people think they good.

Then get the kind fishermen who just like get the fish. All business, these guys. They just go do their business and fill the buckets full. Sometimes these guys fish with dynamite or use bleach for get tako. They no care about the water or nothing. They no like talk about what they do, where to go or nothing. No like give away secrets these guys. Someday no going have fish, and they going look for something else for get. But whatever they get, never going be enough.

And the other kind fishermen?

They the ones that can fish the ocean for generations, yet always still going get fish in the sea. The kind that catch ‘em not by the pound for sell, but for the good times and stories they can tell, with one Tupperware full chicken or styrofoam plate lunches, one soda sitting next to them on the rocks...

They the ones that know where the fish are, during what phase of the moon they going come out, whether the tide stay high or low or in between. What the air is smells like, how thick it feels between one’s fingers and on the tongue.

But more than that, they know the fish themselves, beyond pounds and inches...they know what the fish is—to the smaller fish it devours, as well as to the larger fish beyond. They know what it means to a proud father coming home with one heavy plastic bucket dangling from one bamboo pole to that rascal hanabata kid.

They know the laughter of birthday parties when get plenty sashimi and ahi poke to go with the poi. The taste of dried aku washed down with one cold bottle Miller.

And they know that the fish color is brightest when it courses through the water, and that it quickly fades as the fish gasps and quivers the last life from its gills. Sad, yeah? But from sadness come good times, too.

You know the type.

Here are some poems from the attic! :)

2011-05-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Bosatsu’s Lament

We are about to lose our beauty

and our friends.

We have wasted time

in the heat of time’s desert.

In broken homes

just before they break.

At kitchen tables past bedtime,

where people whisper oh my God,

is this the way

the story is supposed to be?

We try

to be as agile as vacuum.

But our weight is too ugly,

our will, too strong.

No one will miss us,

we try to believe.

This was the title poem of my third chapbook:
The Dead Thoreau

I am lying under the ground.

There is soil on top of me, and grass above that.

It is not a time for snow, because roots

are busily burrowing through my skin.

Where there is no light,

there are other ways to think of time.

I am never the first to know

when the sun is shining, nor when the picnic is canceled

because of rain.

The summer squall means little,

save for that exquisite wetness, indistinguishable

from an afternoon of sweet gentle showers.

Beneath the hawk and sparrow,

my flight becomes the revolution of the earth.

Tomorrow will arrive when it is ready.

When the sun finally seeps through my limbs

I need think of nothing but the world I am creating

as I wait for what will happen next.

Zealots

A woman

her gray hair up in a scarf

shrieks something about “the foreigners

taking everything over.”

Her lipstick is the only color

on a day where ice and salt

wick from the asphalt into soles

and overcoats trapped in the muted deluge

of frantic umbrellas.

In the days of Noah

her flesh would have nourished the benthic

snails and nematodes

awarded unthinking dominion

over every mountain, every soul. Above,

laughter at a drunken father’s nakedness--

baying of donkeys, rats gnawing through

floors.

She grips herself like tablets of stone--

Again, the foreigners

are taking everything over. Passing mortals

avert their eyes

as Moses must have

when first approaching the burning bush.

How dare she call herself chosen!

Would that a truck would hit her,

let the color bleed from her lips, more salt

to thaw the ice, the road! Then,

as apostates argue,

let us search the sky for doves, a single

twig, the promise of virgin land.

UC Davis TransAction

2010-11-26T11:38:00.000-08:00

(This was part of my keynote address at UC Davis, TransAction Week, Nov. 17, 2010. Again, these are notes to a speech, so it's not in any sort of publication form. ;p)

One of the interesting linguistic idiosyncrasies of “trans” is that the prefix pairs so easily with so many suffixes.

When I’m on the road with other trans artists, sometimes, we are in our hotel rooms asking did I see you at transgression? No, was that transformation? Or was it transmission? Transpire (you know, the trans religious conference?—Um, do you mean transcendence? Wait, you were in LA for Trans/Giving.

And yes, it’s funny, but it also shows how much our culture values the act of crossing, of traveling across something.

According to astrology, one third of the psyche is fixed. It stays put. One third of the psyche is mutable, signifying adaptability. The final third is cardinal, where something moves into a new realm, for example when the earth moves from one season into the next. Neither centered, grounded, and regal as the fixed signs, nor as adaptable, versatile, and changing as the mutable ones, the cardinal signs have the energy of an explorer, a pioneer, who is travels to new places without losing hir identity.

For me, the trans journey is a cardinal act, where I take myself and travel across gender boundaries. I am still me, with all my selfness and values and beliefs, but somewhere else. And in journeying to and visiting that somewhere else, I hope to grow, learn, make.

Trans is the great traveler of the Latinate prefixes, the great explorer and pioneer. Travel makes us wiser. It makes business more profitable. It lifts us to heaven and it makes us seem way more interesting at bars and parties. Would you rather hear someone talk about growing up in Paris, or Stockton?

And yet…I think about how trans* people of all flavors often seem isolated, so alone. This seems really weird.

Then again, how often does one feel alone when traveling to a new country, a new town, and you’re bursting with new sights and smells and sounds, but you don’t really know anyone well enough to share or fit in?

Which brings me here to TransAction. Most of you probably know the etymology, but “TransAction” is so beautiful so appropriate a name for this conference…indulge me, okay?

Trans Latin prefix meaning across, on the far side, beyond. And Action from the latin āctiō = “act of doing or making.”

There is something wonderful and visionary about making or doing something across, on the far side, beyond… There is something hopeful about believing that somewhere, on the other side of beyond, there is another person or world with whom we can connect and create something new.

As trans, we necessarily look beyond the self, to both where we were, and where we would like to go. There is always that little voice inside that says what if we knew who lived over there. What if there’s a friend there who I don’t even know I have?

Of course, there is a reason we are having TransAction during this particular week, and it isn’t wonderful at all. This Saturday, Nov 20, is the 12^th Annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance, set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.

Unfortunately, this event has grown every year. I say unfortunately because every year the list of these deaths fills its particular Nov 20 to the bursting point. Among those we remember this year are Victoria White, Myra Ical, Toni Alston… The list grows every year, and it’s never easy to get through. I have a hard time…names mean so much to me. It got so bad once that I vowed to never go to another DOR again.

This year feels even more sorrowful because of the many hate crimes, murders, forced suicides…the bullying or outing of gay youth, many whom were not trans. Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River after a recording of him having a sexual encounter with a man was broadcast online.

Brandon Bitner walked six miles to the place of his public suicide and although he saw no way out for himself, he left instructions for his family on how to make his death worth something.

Of course, crimes like this happen every year. But this year, it seemed to reach a critical mass within the gay community, and so many celebrities made “It Gets Better” videos and pledged support of the Trevor project, and all of these are very worthy goals, very much needed.

But then, I think of Sladjana Vidovic. On October 8, Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window. The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her. At the funeral, the family watched as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket – and laughed.

From what I can tell, Sladjana was neither trans nor gay. She was picked on for a non-familiar name, perhaps an accent, and most importantly, because those bullies could. Because no one stepped in and stopped them.

Would you have helped? Would I? The hardest and least fair duty of a victim is to grow, to say because it happened to me, or to my family, I cannot let it happen to yours.

I know better. I know, firsthand what it feels like. I don’t have the excuse of ignorance.

And, as much as I wish I could hide in my neighborhood, say it’s because I’m trans or queer, or asian, or whatever, the fact is that so many people who are being murdered or beaten or driven to suicide aren’t like me at all.

Or are they?

There is little difference between someone being bullied because of one’s sexual orientation or gender presentation, and being bullied due to race, religion, or poverty. In the end, it’s all the same rope.

A couple of months ago, I read at the Anansi Writer’s Workshop at the World Stage in Leimert Park. It is the premiere African American Arts Collective in Southern California. I was reading a story about a trip to Greensboro, NC, with the Tranny Roadshow. After the show, a group of straight people stop us in the hallway, one of them grabs my arm, and first I think I am going to die because I’m being clocked as trans,

then I realized that no, I’m passing and they are pissed at my friends, and that they are stopping us because apparently they think I’m about to be raped.

Anyway, I read this line: To be transgender means never quite knowing which reaction you’re going to get, where, or from whom. You can be a sister one moment, then have a security guard stop you in the bathroom the next. In one store, the salesperson will smile and say welcome. In another, you’ll get ugly stares and giggles.

And as I’m reading, I’m looking at the audience, and the front row is composed entirely of older, cisgendered African-American Women. And they are nodding, not out at the freaky tranny, but inward, with a knowledge, an awareness of what it means like to be in my shoes.

Afterward, one of them tells me. You are not a guest there. This is your home.

I remember when people were trying to overturn Prop 8, and how so many queers were angry, saying that gay was the new black, as if somehow not being able to be married equated to generations of slavery.

But I also know that during that time, I had watched white petitioners completely ignore black families to get signatures from equally white people. I was overlooked, as well.

Don’t you think people should look at me and figure out somehow, that I was queer? I mean, look!?!

And I also know that of all my queer, West Hollywood friends whom I asked to come to the reading with me, not one of them—not a single one—left their comfort zone to support their friend in straight space in the black part of town.

And I have heard this from other queers of color, talking about how during political or social events, they are the ones selected to canvas, to speak to their communities. And when they suggest otherwise…it’s like umm… but you know those people…

I hope that, even here as we gather strength within our identities, we realized that this strength means little unless it also reaches out to others. Nothing builds alliances better than transactions—new beginnings--across perceived cultural and socioeconomic boundaries—that are made not only when we need others, but when others need us.

It’s not even about color. There is a lot of hurt and fear in this country, and of course people are going to listen to voices that blame everything on ivory tower liberals, when liberals themselves stay in their ivory tower.

We cannot say, “those teabaggers have to get past their hate and prejudice and realize how much we’re all being screwed” on one hand and then, suggest that all the Southern States secede on the other because their just a bunch of (insert your hillbilly stereotype here).

Think about what we hip queers say and hear when we talk about folks from the South, from the Midwest, who shop at Wal-Mart. Who eat Macaroni and Cheese and love Hometown Buffet and Toby Keith and watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network. If you came from an economically devastated part of the country and spoke English with a heavy regional accent…wouldn’t you feel that you were being condescended to, and wouldn’t you be a little pissed off?

We cannot say that names and stereotypes are hurtful on one hand, then do it ourselves in the very next breath. If we want allies, then we should work on being allies. That means actually going places, traveling, supporting other people, other voices…not just to test a theory, or gain hipster cred, but to learn, and when needed, to be converted from our own prejudices.

Alliances must be a two-way street. Being an ally does not mean coming into a meeting and telling everyone that they are uneducated and doing everything wrong. It does not mean putting a statement of solidarity up on Facebook, or that we’ll come back for you later. Nor does it mean forgetting who we are, flaking on our ideals, and being entranced by exoticism, and the latest shiny hip identity.

As trans and genderqueer people, we know better than that! Or at least, we should.

A trans man I know worked, when he needed a job, for marriage equality, gender rights, poly rights and used all the proper terminology and wore all the right t-shirts. Heck, he led training seminars! Well, he legally changed his gender and got married. His thoughts? “As a pseudo hetero, I briefly considered not getting married on principle. Then I realized I wanted free kitchen stuff and discounts on insurance.”

Great. Sorry I sold you out, but damn, these are some beautiful granite countertops.

One of my friends posted an essay by Dean Spade about poly relationships. The metaphor of political alliances and 'strange bedfellows' is extremely apt, I think.

"One of my goals in thinking about redefining the way we view relationships is to try to treat the people I date more like I treat my friends—try to be respectful and thoughtful and have boundaries and reasonable expectations—and to try to treat my friends more like my dates—to give them special attention, honor my commitments to them, be consistent, and invest deeply in our futures together."

Attention, honor, commitment, investment, future. Sounds like everything that would make a great ally, wouldn’t it?

Sometimes I think we have all this alliance building a little backwards. We look and appeal toward people who have the things we want. They can go to the bathroom! They can get married! They have health insurance and secure retirement. They can go to the bathroom! They can travel overseas and all their papers match. They wave at babies and moms don’t freak out. They can go to the bathroom!

Why should it surprise us when these people aren’t jumping all over themselves to ally with us? They’re with their husbands and wives. They are at home, with their families. They’re on vacation. They’re in the bathroom!

It makes more sense to transact, to build and create to other communities who know what means to be outside the law or the church or institutional protection. So yes, this week, it is all about trans people, but remember that trans is a wonderful prefix, but it is at the end, just people.

When the poor white family understands it has more in common with the poor Cuban family than it does with Rupert Murdoch, then we’re getting somewhere.

When queer kids realize that as much as it hurts to hear “that’s so gay,” it hurts other kids to hear “that’s so lame,” we’re getting somewhere.

When an immigrant who is laughed at for the way she sounds helps a trans person being laughed at because of the way she looks, then we’re getting somewhere.

Folks, Trans and Action mean more than how trans, genderqueer, gender variant, and intersex people can make the world better for ourselves. It is a challenge for us to try and make the world just flat out better.

Just as I said earlier, trans is such a common prefix because we instinctively value travel.

I’m not sure if UC Davis would have called me if I were here every day just hanging out. Folks who come from somewhere else, they bring with them a certain power. Which is why, when a straight couple decides to stand up for gay marriage, more people listen.

When a cisgender woman refuses to stand by and watch a trans woman be mistreated, more people listen. And when a white person stands not in front, but beside a person of color who is fighting for hir human rights, more people listen.

Besides, I notice that I am much more decisive defending others than defending myself. I’m sure some of you are that way, too. I have all these issues in my head and sometimes put myself down or take more than I should. Oh, but if I see a friend being hurt! Oh, look out, HELL NO!

I’ve been in three street fights (actually one was a bar fight) in my lifetime and none of these include the times I was assaulted. Each time I actually used my black belt, it was to defend a friend.

All’s this to say that, if I can’t be strong for myself, I’ll be strong for you. And maybe you’ll be strong for someone else. And somewhere down the line, well, when I’m in trouble, I’ll hear a voice I never expected saying, don’t worry, I’ve been where you are. I’m with you, for you, and you don’t have to face this alone.

So, for this week, I ask that even as you seize your own definitions, that you remain true to the beautiful spirit and goals of TransAction. It’s great to have a home, but our work is destined to go across, beyond, out there. That is how we are true to who we are, and sanctify how far we’ve come.

Now, let’s create something new.

FOOL ME NICE: THOUGHTS ON THE GENTLE ART OF MISDIRECTION.

2010-11-26T11:22:00.000-08:00

FOOL ME NICE: THOUGHTS ON THE GENTLE ART OF MISDIRECTION.

(This was delivered at the first Symposion Arcanus on November 23, 2010 at the Bordello Bar in Los Angeles. It's my notes to a spoken performance, so it's not properly formatted for any sort of formal publication, but I thought I'd share.)

No one appreciates being lied to. But today I’m not focused on lying. I’m discussing misdirection. I mention lying, because misdirection is often tossed into the same karmic dumpster as lying. This is not only wrong, but unfortunate.

Lying depends upon subverting honesty and goodwill through persuasion and manipulation. Misdirection, often considered an obstruction to honesty, can actually bypass preconceptions to allow a deeper connection to truth.

Lying makes us feel tired and jaded, while being fooled can fill us with wonder, even innocence. I think we have a sense of this. Being lied to by a friend or a salesperson pisses us off. However, magicians who make rabbits disappear, or cards come out of our ears, amaze and entertain us.

Think of the first (or last) of the Major Arcana, the Fool, clever and gullible, with all the wisdom and ignorance of a child. We understand on some level that that innocence and wisdom are one and the same.

Also, misdirection can have nothing to do with consciousness. Adam and Eve were incapable of lying until they ate from the Tree of Knowledge.

But misdirection? You cannot lie to a stuck and rusty bolt. It’s pretty unconscious. But you can misdirect it, nudging it a tighter to work out the rust, before finally twisting it free.

Basic Illustration: Judo/Martial Arts

The main function of misdirection is to bifurcate a seemingly unified system, often keeping one element at bay, so another element can manifest. In the case of the bolt, we reversing direction lets the threads unbind.

In humans, instinctive resistance and reaction, together are a very powerful combination. However, if we misdirect the resistance impulse away and separate it from the reactive motion, we divide our adversary, and he or she becomes much easier to control.

This is the principle of tsukuri and kuzushi, of breaking your opponent’s balance (his poise) before attempting any technique.

For judo, the misdirection should not be huge; in fact, the smaller the better, otherwise the conscious mind can react and adjust. The goal is to keep the misdirection subliminal, not to lie or deceive the conscious mind, but to act so quickly that the conscious mind is never involved.

Smallness, Vaccines and Tiger Balm

When consciousness is not an issue, the misdirection is often small. For example in medicine, vaccination is essentially a feint—normally, the body does not produce antibodies unless it has been sick.

But what if we inject attenuated or deactivated pathogen into a body? Obviously, we can’t inject too much or too vital a pathogen, but luckily, we don’t need to. Just a little bit can trigger an immune response.

With no outward symptoms, antibodies are being churned out, as the misdirected immune system activates its own defenses.

Another example in medicine is counterstimulation. Consider Tiger Balm.

Tiger Balm’s active ingredient is turpentine. Not exactly high tech stuff. The turpentine creates a little irritation which draws attention away from a strain or sprain. It is a classic misdirection, because it provides relief not through deadening sensations, but through actually causing new ones, separating one’s attention from the initial injury.

Little misdirection=big relief. Besides, I like how turpentine smells.

Chi and Kiai

Sometimes, however, misdirection has to be big. Especially when ego is involved. Much of this type of misdirection involves occupying the conscious analytical mind so it does not get in the way of action. Since the conscious mind is both skeptical AND clueless, small and subtle is usually ignored.

In judo, one may not see the pinky bending up, or the quick flick of the wrist, but everyone hears the kiai. The shout.

Kiai is assumed to focus one’s intent, if you’re talking to a karateka, unify ki, of you’re listening to an aikidoka, or trigger a healthy and useful dose of road rage if you’re doing judo.

Despite these esoteric explanations, it’s possible that the vocalizations serve to misdirect the cognitive speech areas of the brain, to achieve heightened intuition and power.

In fact, a recent study published in the journal Neuroimage. “Human Brain Activation during Phonation and Exhalation ” suggests that “the laryngeal gestures for vowel and syllable production and controlled exhalation involve left hemisphere mechanisms similar to speech articulation.”

Now, as a martial arts teacher, I know how badly speech and left-hemisphere thinking slows a student down. A common axiom for martial artists is “Don’t talk. Don’t think. Just do.”

Back to the study:

“On the other hand, the neural control for vocalizations that are not specific to speech, such as whimper or prolonged vocalization, will show a more bilateral distribution. In fact…the response volume for phonation was greater in the right hemisphere compared to the left.”

I believe kiai misdirects the pathways that would usually serve left-brain-centered thought and speech and repurposes them for right-brained spatial and intuitive positioning. Result? More speed, power, and flow.

It is interesting how the study results match my instructions to my students. The whimpering part is especially interesting, since Bruce Lee would often sound like a hungry puppy dog. Just before he kicked your ass. Even if you were Chuck Norris.

Of course, rather than explaining any of this, and having my students think, I just have my students yell and make funny noises.

Misdirection in Religion

Even more than in martial arts, when we work with religion or magic, our main obstacle IS the conscious mind. When do we pray? When we need help. When do we think of magic? When we need it. In other words, we invariably come to religion or magic with an agenda, and while consciousness serves a purpose, it always ends up getting in the way.

Churches, at least the successful ones, know this, and employ various strategies to misdirect the mind.

From its opulent cathedrals, to its persistent use of Latin, to those ornate robes, the regalia and ceremony of the Catholic Church all serve to misdirect the conscious, skeptical mind, to open the soul to a deeper presence, and a deeper awe.

The trappings of a church engage and misdirect the senses so we can transcend them. Chanting or bells for the ear, iconography and symbolism for the eye, transubstantion and communion for the taste, incense for smell, rosaries for touch.

Meanwhile, our conscious mind cannot help but try to weave everything into a narrative, to analyze critically, or to posit meaning because that is what consciousness does. And, while the conscious mind is occupied, one’s core being may enter the presence of God. Or the flying spaghetti monster, if that’s your church.

Think of a mandala, or, better yet, visualize one. Mandalas are circular, geometric…sometimes bordered in gold leaf or accented with bodhisattvas or animals or deities, but that some of them are and some are not show that these motifs are not central to the function of the mandala.

In its most distilled forms, a mandala’s goal has nothing to do with the mandala. The eye is drawn to its center, but the goal is not to reach the the center. The mandala is essentially a tool to misdirect one’s sensory apparatus so one is free to encounter experience itself as pure, and as the abode of enlightenment.

In certain types of Zen Buddhism, koans accomplish similar goals by entangling the critical mind in seeming non sequiturs. The point of “what is the sound of one hand clapping” is not to get the answer, nor to find its place in history. Younger students may be tempted to “solve” the koan, or the find something clever to say. They may research the koan and try to classify it according to date or type, or history.

Meanwhile the teacher is probably eating pickled vegetables.

Point being? The answer is not in the answer at all. The saying "do not confuse the pointing finger with the moon", implies that awakening is the simple realization of one's nature — not the ability to interpret a kōan with one's mind.

What interests me about misdirection, however, is not finding Buddha nature, but that misdirection is very useful and malleable. It neither respects, nor disparages one’s identity, even if that identity is expressed through desire, which is a very non-Buddhist concept. Misdirection obtains, whether one is on a journey of self-discovery, self-denial, or simply wants to cast a spell.

Magic

People often assume that magic connects one to the paranormal or extrasensory. However, what exactly does that mean? There is no fixed threshold of consciousness; consciousness manifests in degrees. By misdirecting our consciousness, we may, ironically become not unconscious, or semiconscious, but more than conscious.

Much of the paraphernalia of various magical traditions again serve to misdirect the mundane mind, helping the practitioner to reach deeper consciousness whether one calls it Samadhi or gnosis.

When I first heard of Austin Osman Spare’s sigilization techniques a few years back, I was amazed at how elegantly and efficiently he used misdirection to effect magic. With sigilization, the words stating an intent, often a sentence, is reduced to an abstract design; the sigil is then charged with the will of the creator. Finally, depending on your philosophy, it’s destroyed, either ritually if you need it, or tossing it in the garbage it you don’t.

Or, it’s simply forgotten.

Chaos magic, then does not require cavorting with demons in the 666 layers of abyss. (I mean, if you want to, go right ahead…and say high to Demogorgon!) But for me, the genius of chaos magic lies in how effortlessly a sigil takes an ordered lexicon such as a sentence and randomizes it. The mundane mind, which refuses to let go of the lost language follows the sigil into oblivion, while the motive force, the charge, is unleashed into the universe.

With so practical, so functional a method, it’s difficult to see how Spare could have ever been a student of Crowley’s, but then again, sometimes it’s hard to see how Martin Luther could have ever been a Catholic.

Poetry

It’s only a little sidestep to go from religion and mysticism to the arts, especially when talking about Milton, who was every bit as religious as Luther.

However, instead of attacking language directly as Luther did when burning the Papal bulls, Milton uses language in Paradise Lost to convey not the mere facts of human fallibility, but its very experience, its sting.

For this, Milton uses poetry and in his poetry, one tool. Enjambment.

Enjambment means to carry a sentence over from one line of poetry to the next.

In my English classes I talk about how the mind hungers for completion, which is why we hate sentence fragments. Here, the mind is misdirected into thinking it has the complete answer at line’s end, to have the answer crushed or transformed when the next line continues the sentence.

In Paradise Lost, Book 1, Milton writes:

Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first
Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant…

See how this plays and skewers preconceptions of divine presence and might? And in Book Two:

… now conscience wakes despair
That slumbered, wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.

As the reader stumbles, Milton leaves her in naked awareness of her hubris in envisioning God. The pain of falling, failing, being found wanting. This prepares and opens your mind to the hell that Milton in about to create.

The Voice of God Beyond Perfection

In addition to poetry, Misdirection plays a subtle, but very important role in music. Minute imperfections in pitch or timing humanize a piece. In fact, some music software has a humanize function, to introduce slight imperfections in timing so a piece does not sound too mechanical.

When it comes to pitch, consider the violin. It has no frets. The violinist uses her kinesthetic sense to estimate where the note is supposed to be. I know there are a few violinists who disagree, but even if you tell me that you have perfect pitch on your fingerboard, don’t you dare tell me that all violinists do. Yet, the violin, with its microtonal vibrato and overtones, somehow captures us more than a simple moog-generated sine wave. More than any other instrument, the violin has channeled the soul of Western civilization and drawn comparisons to the human voice.

Like the violin, a voice has no frets or stops. Pitch, again, is a function of muscle memory and control, which is inherently variable.

This is misdirection at its finest, for both voice and violin. Hearing the pitch waver ever-so-slightly around perfection raises two separate threads: one is focused on what is being heard, and the second, what should be heard were the voice perfect. This misdirection allows the listener to collaborate with the music, bring this idea of perfection into it, and as the deliverer of perfection to become in a very real sense, divine.

Also, the closer a singer approaches perfection, the more clear it becomes that perfection can never be reached. For me, this vulnerability makes listening to Callas or Pavarotti not merely an aesthetic experience, but a human, spiritual one, with all the power and pathos of Original Sin.

In contrast, when a singer is Auto-Tuned, although the voice may be pitch-corrected to mathematical perfection, this very perfection eliminates the need for interpretation, so we have nothing to do but listen passively.

Yes, can be pretty, but it is an unchallenged beauty. Ultimately, paradoxically, Auto-tuned perfection becomes annoying, boring, like angels singing hosanna hosanna over and over and you know they have never ever gotten a zit, a parking ticket, was late on a credit card payment, or farted in public.

And, since perfection shouldn’t be boring, we know we are missing something, and that can leave us dissatisfied, disaffected, and stagnant.

Misdirection, ultimately, as motion

Ultimately, I believe misdirection, is not deception at all, but the initiator of motion. Look at a yin yang. The dark fish has a light eye, the light fish has a dark. This has been interpreted as reconizing that one cannot exist without knowledge of the other, and we are all one, but I find that insipid.

What do we do when we talk to people? We look them in the eye. What are we looking for: connection. If you, the dark fish, had a destiny to be a dark fish, why on earth would you ever move? You’ve already reached your destiny—you’re the dark fish!

Unless you saw in the eyes of the white fish, a darkness that reminded you of you. And vice-versa.

When I see the fish, I see them in motion, essentially perfect, yet eternally misdirected, mortal, and moving. There’s something beautiful and sad about that. And reassuring, too.

My final thought comes from the Tarot. When doing a reading, when we see a reversed card, we instinctively ask “why is this card upside-down?”

A novice reader can often jump to the conclusion that a reversed card means something antagonistic to the upright card. Or, some readers just ignore reversed cards, saying it complicates their readings.

Yet, even as we ask about reversed cards, this begs the deeper question: why do we so rarely note when a card is not reversed? Why do we often accept these cards as they are, without thinking of their position? Their motion? Not in relation to the other cards, but in relation to themselves. Without the possibility of reversal, even The Fool can become jaded, complacent… a signifier of identity, rather than a motion…of sentimentality, rather than growth.

In this sense, a reversed card may actually be nudging us toward actualizing the very qualities and potentialities that we’d already possess, were we not fooling ourselves.

Through imbuing us with motion…the dynamic of reversal...the possibility and possibilities of misdirection do not merely convince us that we are thinking, nor even that we are alive, but immerse us in the experience that we simply, and unambiguously exist.

And that may be the most exquisite and gentle misdirection of all.

But that’s the subject for my next talk. :)

Deal with the Devil

2010-11-17T01:26:00.000-08:00

(NOTE: This is a performance script. The boldface stuff is a reminder for me to do things. I perform this with a prerecorded track if I don't have my guitar. The harmonica always I do live, regardless.)

Harmonica

I tell myself it’s me.

I have told myself so many times,

I can speak the words

Without opening my mouth.

I tell myself I’m missing

parts I never deserved.

I tell myself

I am filthy, broken, and stained

Redeemed by the bruises

That ride and spread like lovers on my back.

I turn from the lights

Turn from the mirrors,

Avert my gaze

from powers and prayers I tell myself

I am too soiled to understand.

And I tell myself it’s me.

But on a cool quiet night, when the bills are paid, there’s fresh bread and cheese, when I feel centered as a candle flame.

I have discovered my sky fills with stories, true stories, like eager songbirds

Clean and bright—and if you can be still, they lose their fear.

They fly to you like your lover’s voice on a nursery rhyme

and they sing.

Harmonica

But when they get scared and fly off, it’s a perfect prom night ending

in a screen door slamming and your daddy’s

snoring in the dark with the TV set on,

and you’ve caught your skirt in the jamb and try not to stumble,

hoping he doesn’t look up.

Because if you can just get to your room and close the door,

maybe you can look at yourself, without fear, one last time

through your own eyes…

Harmonica

Sometimes I look at myself

And say what the hell am I thinking?

Too many parts broken, too many parts whole,

yet somehow missing parts.

I touch my legs and hear my mother,

who told me not to believe my scars.

I touch my lips and hear my father,

and all the reasons he gave

so he could hit me.

I hear those voices forcing my body, my voice

to tell myself it’s me.

With my empty breasts rising

and my sperm count falling,

I am left with no milk of any sort.

How can I nourish anything?

Where is my fertility, my motherhood?

When you’re not worthy to pray—not worth being saved—you work with the voices you have. The magic fades. And you’re so tired, and stupid… You’re nothing special, nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s real anyway… your pain, thoughts, body, especially not your self.

Oh, I would like to believe there is a heaven

Or Creator,

but when can I stop creating that belief

become lighter than faith, and soar?

Forget prophecy. Forget the crystal ball.

Let me find my future in a kaleidoscope

tumbling with the divine in jagged bright contradictions

that cut so deep you can press your ear against our bellies

and never hear a cry.

(say in interlude) And then, something lands,

(music starts here) Not the door flying open, but a reflection, a scent,

the first time you walked in snow or smelled wild strawberries

something to love, because it’s truly your own…

One night my girlfriend and I were driving to Arizona. It was raining, and windshield was streaky. We couldn’t drive safely. We pulled off into a late night auto parts store, to find replacement blades.

The saleman saw us, and grunted “well, those are what you want.” But when we got to the truck, they weren’t even close. So we stood there, the two of us, in the rain…

But then we nodded, went back in, and returned his stupid blades. I found a pair I thought I could jury-rig. The rain was coming down hard, but I told Steph, “don’t worry, I think I can do this.” I borrowed her knife, pried out the old blades, loosened the brackets, and slid the new ones in. And we were off!

I think of a femme Asian tranny dyke who can tell a car parts salesman he’s wrong in the middle of a stormy desert night and change a pair of windshield wipers that aren’t supposed to fit.

I think of someone worried about her hair getting frizzy in the rain, even as she says the cut on her hand is no big deal.

I think of someone asking her girlfriend if she’s turning butch, even as she frets about her eyeliner in an old pickup truck on its way to Arizona…

And then, I tell myself it’s me.

as I take another pill, and I get a another day older

and all I’ve managed is to live another day in a world

I can’t find a place in:

That I can be more than a pill or a syringe,

or memories or scars.

That I was made in the image

of someone who said her body is okay as it is

but stays up nights wondering

what it would be like to carry a child

That my creator

is too big to buy clothes off the rack,

and worries about

which bathroom to use at the airport or mall.

That my creator has rolled a pack of Virginia Slims Ultra-Light Menthols

in a T-Shirt sleeve

fixed her eyeliner with a licked Q-tip,

and changed a tire in a leather corset and platform shoes.

And I tell myself it’s me.

Sometimes, when you’ve been with someone for a while, you might forget why you’re even there. But, if you’re lucky, one day—or one night—you might catch that girl out the corner of your eye,

or from a distance,

as if by accident,

and see that person—almost as a stranger—for the first time.

And I wonder how many times, how many trips to Arizona each of us has made, what windshield wipers we’ve all changed, the imprints we’ve made in the hearts of our friends, and how many times we’ve missed the chance to regard ourselves as we present to the world, and fall in love with who we are, almost as strangers, for the first time, all over again.

Harmonica

Getting ready for UC Davis--Rough Sketch

2010-11-03T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
I have the honor of giving the keynote at UC Davis' Trans Action Week this Nov 17. I am working on what to say right now. :)

Speeches and keynotes are wonderful and challenging. I write something fresh for every occasion because the world is different, the times are different, and I am different. Words that might have been vital last year need to be replaced with new insights, new developments. I owe the audience my truth and my immediate presence. For now, what has driven me is twofold. First, how does one deal with bullying and a culture where compassion is equated with weakness? Second, how do we truly nurture each other, rather than simply use each other, in our social and political activities?

So much to think about... And I so thank the people at UC Davis for letting me share. :)
Ryka

PS--plus I probably will do a poem or two if they let me!

Writing Erotica

2010-10-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

So I am writing an erotica story right now. It is a process; most of my work hasn't been overtly, or covertly, or gee, even tangentially erotic. Much of that has to do with my own self image, and the need to shut down my own sexuality and eros--not necessarily because of Sin...but because of abuse.
   I learned to keep valuable parts of myself away from where my parents could get to them. Unfortunately, now, when I have a bit more safety than before, many of these part are still hidden. At my age, maybe it's time to air this all out--and, writing has always been how I process--so there you go.
   It's a little strange that the protagonist here still lives with her parents, but perhaps that's because part of me is still that little girl trapped in a building that feels like it will burn and shake and smother her.
  What releases her? Desire. How? Ah! That's the story...

  Wish me luck!

"My Father Holds Me like a Bible"

2010-08-09T11:14:00.001-07:00

There was a version of this in Lodestar Quarterly #7, I like this poem, and since it's already been published, I'll just include it here. :) Sort of like being put out to stud! ;p

My Father Holds Me like a Bible

My father

holds me like a Bible.

Shakes the holiness from me,

yells verses from me,

pounds me,

uses me to preach his glory

singing Jesus loved the fishermen,

Jesus loves

those who walk on water.

My skin twitches like the water,

my lungs spray

something bitter like brine.

And the red sky

has nothing on my illuminations,

hand-laid bruises

that say God loves sea level

that we must all be laid low

to love God.

The back is best broken

before the foot comes down.

Before each word

proclaims divinity,

before Jesus

calming the rough seas,

before Peter

deaf to the waves,

hearing no love

through an already-martyred ear.

Many Mountains Moving! :)

2010-07-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Good things sometimes happen without warning. This past weekend, Debra Bokur, one of the poetry editors of Many Mountains Moving emailed me to say she was in town and would like to have tea with me. She also asked if I could bring some of my work. Any poet trying to publish knows it's not supposed to work that way. It's usually all about postage and stamps and cover letters and the whole process can get pretty faceless.

We had the most wonderful afternoon at Zen Zoo yesterday talking about everything from poetry to health spas to Los Angeles. And yes, she wants two of my pieces. I asked why she contacted me, and she said I made a good impression on her at the AWP Conference! Later, she looked at my Web site (which was on the card I gave her), and found stuff she liked. Wow...

Ms. Bokur is the type of poetry editor one hopes is actually reading work. She reads carefully, but with enthusiasm and passion. She has experience both in and out of the poetry community, and looks to poetry not as a commodity or tool, but as a vital art form just as capable as ever of enlightening and healing the reader.

I was thrilled. And yet, I was also proud. Proud because the AWP Conference scared me, but I went, anyway, met some great people and was prepared with cards. Making my Web site current was and is difficult, but I am on it. And poetry continues to be a challenge and often so lonely, but I am writing consistently and also reading great work, working through my insecurity the whole way.

Writing is a journey. Sometimes hard, sometimes cold, always demanding...but just like any journey, occasionally the wind is at your back and you meet people who remind you that you have direction, and you there is nothing you would rather be doing than what you are doing right here, right now, today! :)

Long Poems...Gee...

2010-07-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I am back from the "Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines" (which will go on sale right here in August) party! It was so wonderful to meet the RADAR staff, and Diane DiPrima, and Justin Chin. I will probably take a little time time to process over the next few entries.

I am trying to figure out how to organize my writing blog and blog blog. I had originally thought to focus this space on writing samples, with my blog blog about everything else, but I think instead that everything about the process of writing or composition will be here, including entries like this.

After coming home, two (of many, but these are the first) things struck me... First, not only how many lives Eli Coppola had touched, but the quality of people... David West, (whom I finally found online,) handed me an envelope with chapbooks and pictures, and an earring... Jen Joseph cried onstage. For all who might have doubts from time to time (put me on this list, especially when my bike gets stolen), poetry matters. It matters a lot.

The second thing off the top of my head is how beautiful the right words can be. Justin Chin. Holy shit, how beautiful is his work. It's so careful and that care is not ponderous or overworked. Its freeing and affirming and so very right. One gets the feeling that Chin tosses away lines many of us would use, looking only for the best ones to serve on his page. The result is that even his lighter verse has this amazing completeness, this seamless engulfing music that fills you with tears and makes you glad for them.

When I came home, I looked at my latest long poem, "As Little as the Things We Be." It's gone through many revisions, but truth be told, I still have some work to do. I have been sort of dreading this, as I there are deadlines and publications and I still want to win a Pulitzer Prize blah blah blah...

But after hearing Chin, I just looked at my latest work and asked myself am I proud to show this? As proud as I was of "Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines?"

No.

So it's back to the notepad. There is SO MUCH good with this poem; I think it can be something beautiful... Patience, perseverance...

At the last AWP Dan Albergotti wrote me in his book (his The Boatloads is another book with the same care for detail), "perseverance is omnipotent." After hearing Chin's work, I was reminded that it can also be transcendent.

Time to write.

:)
Ryka

PS--I am always looking for writers to bounce ideas with. :)

If you missed my readings, my chapbook is now at Modern Times! :)

2010-07-12T09:59:00.001-07:00

If you missed my readings, my chapbook is now at Modern Times! :)

Today at 9:45am | Edit Note | Delete

(from RADAR, Friday, July 9)
RADAR Productions If you missed last night's poetry reading, we're sad for you. But we want you to know you can pick up a copy of the beautiful chapbook "Sometimes Too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines" by Ryka Aoki at Modern Times Bookstore for just $7. Get one while supplies last.

http://www.mtbs.com/

I love this poem like a drowning girl loves her life jacket. Thank you to RADAR, Inconvenient Press and especially to Eli Coppola.

Death of the Postcolonial Man

2010-07-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

The light at my back

keeps me from whistling at the moonbeams

and her legs.

The Chinese girl with the waterfall hair

hides herself behind sleepy clouds.

If I died today,

my blood would pour into the sea

and the sea would still be clear.

For God filled the Earth with Chinese girls.

The air collapses in a billion

pairs of hands. A cup of jasmine tea spills

through a knothole in the floor.

(This is an older poem I kinda like...)

A short excerpt from "Sometimes too Hot the Eye of Heaven Shines"

2010-06-08T18:47:00.000-07:00

I am thrilled to have won the first Eli Coppola Memorial Chapbook contest. Please come to my reading and/or release party in July (see "Performances" for details).

Here's a brief excerpt from the chapbook:

Child, I shall never compare you
to a summer’s day.
Sister, I do not commute by Gold Line or Red.
I do not park my Honda overnight, in an indoor lot,
with car wash, security, and valet.
Brother, I abuse a substance from which I never wake.
Restless and empty, when the Black Lite closes,
I chase the dragon in a strange and cold backseat.
Father, the sunrise writhes in the rearview
like the anonymous poet
to whom I kneel and confess I have no friends,
beside the Western off ramp—
sirens, helicopters, drivers waving over here babe.
Mother, I won’t come home tonight
for I am only junk mail and a lost credit card
without the lights, camera, action

Teeny Excerpt from "He Mele a Hilo"

2010-03-22T02:41:00.000-07:00

Nona Watanabe stepped onto the stage, all radiant in her purple and orange and green, sharkbait skin and all....

Something about her just stopped everything. Folks actually stopped eating, mid bite, and she paused for a second, looking, it seemed, into each one of them. And then she smiled, and was like one pure hit of aloha...

Just be yourself, Nona, the old lady in red had said. That’s all you ever had to be.

Tears were pouring down Noelani’s face, and she didn’t care. As she watched her dancers working together, Nona Watanabe in the front, she felt all her work, all her time finally being realized, with Ku’uipo, it just hit her Aunty Kahakunoe and yes, even Jesus, who after all this time, she had tried and tried, but never truly either understood or forsook.

These ARE the ancient times---and these are modern times as well. In the sphere of eternity, distinctions between one time and another are arbitrary--even now, Lo’ihi is being born under the sea--who will write the ancient chants for her?

Who will dance the dances that will be remembered only in part, scraps handed down from generation to generation, revered almost as much for what is lost as what is retained?

Are the ships and airplanes now any different from the outriggers in days past? Are the stars not the same, the sunset the same color? Don’t the rains make the same sound as they fall onto the forest canopy?

When the kahiko dances--or the roots of these dances were first composed, were they not science? Weren’t the kahuna the most modern minds of their day? It was not superstition, it wasn’t even religion or mythology. It was science, as real as those damned telescopes up on top of Mauna Kea, which started off so wonderfully--to view the clearest heavens, but now fallen victim to the same arrogance as the astronomers now try to keep the area all kapu to themselves...

One generation’s observatory becomes another’s, as the days and years pass, and parents change like seasons.

And for Nona Watanabe, she understood finally what it meant to simply be. For in her purples were all the colors of the sky and ocean at night. In her oranges and reds, the color of the sun, setting and rising. In her shimmering greens, the color of the forest, and sugarcane, and yes, even more ocean, the honu, and in her smile, the radiance of the sun itself. With the music and the dance, people, every one of them, felt yes, this is our song.

And then it was over. And for a few seconds, the audience was silent, as if it was waking up from a dream...

Then the thunder came....

Wow. My work was in a sermon.

2010-03-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

In my darker times, I wonder if anyone is listening to my words. Then, I realize that these words and this work matters.

This was preached at First Unitarian Church of Toledo on February 6th, 2010.

http://gqminister.livejournal.com/2822.html

Thank you, to Sunshine Jeremiah Wolfe.

*hug*
ryka

Eli Coppola Memorial Chapbook Contest

2010-03-16T23:03:00.000-07:00

I just found out yesterday that I won the first Eli Coppola Memorial Chapbook Contest... I am still in a bit of shock--it has been disappointment after disappointment with publishers, and I have seriously been wondering if I was ever going to get published as a poet again.

Being trans queer is a weird double-edged sword. I have been remarkably fortunate. I have toured and performed and spoken and met some of the best people a girl could ever dream of meeting. I have worked with musicians and filmmakers, and dancers, and wow... I was even picked up for a reading in a limousine.

But, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, I want more than that. I write poetry not just for trans people, but for myself and anyone, trans, or queer, or not. And, I wonder how my work actually fares when placed next to the poets and artists--trans, queer, or not--who inspire me. I want to believe that my work is good on its own, and not just included because I happen to ID a certain way.

Up until now, maintaining that belief has been difficult. As Ryka, I have only been published as a poet once in a non-trans setting, and never in a non lgbt setting. I was doubting myself, and any fringes of talent I was supposed to have retained. But thanks to some weird determination and the help of some very close friends... I have been able to write and take myself seriously.

I was in a 24 hr Post Office kiosk at 2 am to get this manuscript in. I was tired and sad and depressed. But I forced myself to complete the manuscript and put it in an envelope and rewrite the mailing label twice because I kept fucking up the spelling...

When I got an email back, I thought, "great! I wonder who won?" Then I read "congratulations" and I was like, "Huh? What does that mean?" Then I shouted. Then I cried...

Then my friend told me about Eli Coppola, showed me some of her work...and I am even more honored and grateful. Wow.

A Poem a Day :)

2010-02-13T00:22:00.000-08:00

Thank you for adding me to this wonderful list. This is "Before the Last Dance." It was originally in "Lodestar Quarterly," but I like it here. Thank you, exceptindreams...

"Before the Last Dance"

Sleeping Against the Wall

2010-02-03T22:24:00.001-08:00

"I used to like sleeping against the wall..."

This was published in Lodestar Quarterly.

Girl Talk! NQAF 2009 :)

2010-02-03T22:09:00.000-08:00

(Note: Gina DeVries asked me to write this for “Girl Talk: A Cis and Trans Woman Dialogue” part of the 2009 National Queer Arts Festival. Performed June 17, 2009.)
Sometimes, unlocking the door is not enough.
Nor is nudging the door ajar, with a distant come in if you want.
Sometimes we stop our babble to get the house ready.
We turn off the computer, and a little nervous, we touch our lips
before we step outside and hug and say I’ve been waiting for you!
For the new person isn’t new, but someone we forgot
We knew. And in receiving that person
we reunite with ourselves.

My sister and parents visited Japan about seven years ago. It had been four generations since any family on the US mainland had met family on Japanese soil.

The weeks beforehand held so much excitement. My mother and sister tried to learn as much Japanese as possible, from TV, friends, books. So many books! They got letters from Japan, and through the broken English, gleaned that my relatives wanted to know about Los Angeles, what food my family ate, what they liked to do.

From what I gather, it was truly what a reunion might be. My sister said she liked shrimp tempura… so apparently they served it every day. For breakfast. The entire trip, my mother says, was a series, not just of landmarks and photographs, but of questions, and answers, and interest. Now I know someone in my family is obsessed with making perfect soba. Another is a volleyball player. Yet another runs a taxi company.

They finally know about our family, the ones that left for a better life in America, and they want to come over soon to try In-N-Out Burger. I’ll probably take them to Disneyland, too. But I will also listen
to the cadence in their voices, the rhythm of their laughs,
the ice cream flavors they choose
and in these things, discover something more about myself.

Because, along with this temple and this castle, and that shopping district, and more shrimp tempura, my Japanese family took my parents to our family burial grounds. Our…fucking burial-grounds.

I had heard my grandma talk about my family being samurai, but the funny thing about being Japanese-American is that everyone claims they come from a samurai family. As if there was something wrong with being a farmer. That’s why I’ve always assumed we’re from good farmer stock—in fact, that’s what my family in Hawaii does.

But no… grandma wasn’t shitting us. My mother emails a picture. No Photoshop, either!

An when my family comes back to LA, I come by to visit and my mother said “this is your rice.” And I go yeah, I know—it’s on my plate. Then she looked at me and said—no—this is your rice. It’s from Japan from the family rice field. The field your family has had for five hundred years.

I’ll never forget that rice… Even though I’ve not yet made it to Japan, I know I have family there. And in that, I am a little more complete.
***
A few months ago, I am organizing with Dyke Day.

At this meaning, they are trying to be inclusive. Where do the transwomen go? How do we reach out to people of color? We need more nonwhite performers. Does anyone know any?

I look around. I’m the only transwoman. The only person of color. I also note who has dated who in the room, and realize most of this group can, literally, be described as a clusterfuck.

It’s funny, what a group of people, dyke or gay, or asian, or whatever, can do and say in groups. But especially in dykespace, where everyone so wants consensus. The problem is if everyone runs in the same social circle, you’re not getting much diversity, and more dangerously, since everyone is agreeing—provincial views may seem to be natural, or common sense.

They find consensus, start seeing themselves as within the community, and everyone else as without.

A roomful of dykes who go to the same clubs and know the same people and are all each other’s exes decide that to be diverse each of them will choose select their favorite band—well, that’s not going to work.

Back at the meeting, no one is listening to me. Outreach the mantra is outreach. We need to outreach. It’s sounds like they’re planning a PBS pledge drive.

Outreach. I hate that word. To reach out means to reach from away from the self, to something else. If we really are one community, then this term makes no sense, because we do not outreach to ourselves. We’re already ourselves.
I prefer reconnect. Or, better yet, reunion. I believe we all come from the same place, but are separated by one sort of geography or another. But we are family, and we do not outreach to family.

Outreach assumes otherness, while reunion means commonality, equality… Even thousands of miles and four generations away, we never thought of outreaching to our family in Japan. We had a reunion. There was never a feeling of co-opting. It was a mutual celebration, a recognition of common being.

However, with Dyke Day, I don’t bring this up. I’ve missed some meetings, and there’s a deadline coming, and I don’t want to get in the way. Last year I definitely would have—see

I have worked with Dyke Day for two years. The first year was wonderful. We had a rotating facilitator, and a feelings checker, to make sure everyone had space to be felt and heard. I took my turn as both facilitator and feelings checker, had my ideas heard and some were even incorporated. It reminded me that though transwomen think of cisdykes as privileged, which to a point they are, it’s a relative privilege. They still are seen, much like transfolk, as freaks and deviants by most people in middle America.

This year, though, things were just rushed. There was sniping, and emotion, and some people were horribly overworked, and others felt pushed away.

It was actually kind of refreshing to see cisdykes sniping at each other. Just goes to show—sometimes a mean person isn’t transphobic. Sometimes she’s just mean. But when things get rushed, old habits come back. And this year, there’s so much stress that friends who know each other have sort of taken over Dyke Day and I’m not one of those friends.

***

Family is family when the relationships persist even when things are bad. When even the best plans and organizations fracture, we revert to relationships that go beyond political or social utility. That means a deeper emotional attachment, maybe even a deeper physical attachment. And that goes back to the clusterfuck I just talking about.

As much as sex sells, sex seals. Especially in LGB communities. Trans is not a sexual orientation, but lesbian is. Yet, if you have heard that every dyke has gone out with every other dyke, you are prolly leaving out transdykes. It is a rare and secure lesbian who would date one of us, and YES, that is significant.

Within dyke space, sexual and romantic relationships reflect in every facet of the community, and not being able to comfortably flirt or fuck or laze away at a womens’ spa restricts the ability of transwomen to participate freely in a community that to a large part is defined by who wants to sleep with whom. Sex is a mode of communication and acculturation, which cannot be separated from social activism or political change, or anything else that queer women are trying to accomplish. We are under attack, overworked, stressed, and can’t make rent. In these times, we will reach for the familiar, and until more transwomen become part of that familiar, we find ourselves tossed aside in the name of expedience. Even your dysfunctional ex is a known dysfunction! And I’m not knocking dysfunction—if it ain’t dysfunctional, it ain’t family.

Perhaps some dykes will never play with dick, no matter how pretty the wrapping or ribbon. For others, though, it might not be that one hates penises, or finds transwomen undateable, but because there are some prejudices and insecurities within that are harder to deal with than to find a scapegoat.

I know Japanese Americans who can’t speak a lick of Japanese who prove how Japanese they are by hating Koreans. Many Irish-Americans, who felt trodden upon by other Americans proved their American-ness by persecuting the Asian-Americans. And we all know the story about the self-hating gay politician who introduces the most hateful legislation and rhetoric.

I believe that much of the antipathy toward transwomen can be traced to a similar insecurity. On top of that there is so much body insecurity. Say what you want about Paris Hilton, but it’s kind of mean to diss her for having big feet. Or why do we care what Megan Fox’s thumbs look like? Or that whole Susan Boyle thing?

How many women worry about looking awkward, of having feet that are too big, of having other women giggle behind their backs? I think of that Seinfeld episode years ago about the girl with the Man Hands. How many women looked at their own fingers?

But even for dykes, instead of sharing insecurities and having dialogues, it can be easier to sloganeer and shout being a dyke means hating dick and whatever it is attached to.

And yet, I still identify as a dyke. Why? My friends tend to be dykes, my literary heroes, and yes, I even found one of those rare and special women who was secure enough to date me.

Besides, I sometimes don’t have much in common with other transfolk. None of us are without issues, which is why I can’t get mad at cisdykes any more than I can get mad at straight women or white people.

In fact, some of my most insane encounters have been with transfolk, usually people who did not know me that well, who made all sorts of assumptions about me because of a comment here and a comment there. and you know what, finally I had to say, “Hey—I don’t even know you.”

Before Dyke Day, I started a performance series, Trans/Giving. With Trans/Giving we work not just with transdykes, but with people all over the genderorientation spectrum. And again, though most people have been cool, there has been some crazy shit.

There’s nothing worse than reading someone’s poems, going, um… no, then finding out sie is blasting your organization on the internet for being transphobic or elitist, or whatevereverever.

Yes, I know that transphobia is out there… but so is a lot of very bad poetry.

If you don’t like a festival, don’t run to the internet and bitch about it, run to the internet and start a zine. Go kick ass. You don’t like our show, put your own show up. I’ll even buy a ticket.

We can’t tiptoe on eggshells, afraid to make a mistake! My sister was served shrimp every day because of cluelessness, not stereotyping. If we remember that this is family, then miscues and misadventures, no matter how awful they seem at the time, are exactly what makes familyfamily. Face it—we’re stuck with each other.

Even though I may have my differences with the way Dyke Day was run this year, and will not be working with them next year, they are doing something. If you don’t like Dyke Day, fill out the paperwork and shake the right hands and make something of your own. Trans/Giving has shifted a little since I left, and I wouldn’t have made some of the changes they have. But that’s why I am so proud of them—they are OWNING it—not asking permission, but just being fierce.

And I’ll take a bunch of somewhat clueless dykes running a show over a group of transpeople in chat rooms bemoaning how the world won’t accept us. Or gimme the Goths. At least when the Goths bemoan, they bemoan with style.

***

But this gets away from my main point, which was my family’s rice. That something that might be so bland and so plain signified so much. This was not an exotic gift given as outreach, this was my rice, my family, my own. And that is what made all the difference.

How do we convey family? How do we reunite with long-lost relatives? How many questions would you ask? Are there even right questions?

There really is only one cure to separation, and that is getting together. It’s not about learning terminology, or getting the right answer; it’s about taste and smell and feel. It’s about cooking what a lost-lost sister might like for breakfast—not out of duty for being “inclusive,” but out of anticipation and excitement that the family will never be the same.

It’s sending gifts on holidays that say “love.” It’s not my house is your house, but this house is our house. It’s discovering you are the answer to someone’s mythology, just as they are to your own. And that together, your lives not only merge, but grow and focus and be.

It’s about a lazy afternoon, with the sniffles, having nothing to do but lie naked on freshly laundered sheets, watching the person you love breathing and blinking her eyes.

2009 Day of Remembrance, Madison WI

2010-02-03T21:58:00.000-08:00

(note: Some people wanted me to post this. Here you go! THANK YOU to all the wonderful and fierce friends I made in Madison. *HUG*)

This is the tenth Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day set aside to honor those killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event began after the attack on a woman in Boston, Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 initiated the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999.

At many DOR observances, the name and circumstances of each victim is read, The stories are told in first person; one reader at a time assumes the identity of one victim at a time--giving voice to a life that ended without being heard. Often a candle is snuffed at the end of each life.

This has been a particularly brutal year for trans murders… From 2004-2008, the DOR sight tracked about 2 or 3 transgender murders a month. From Jan to November 2009, that number went up to nine. One woman, Paulina Ibarra, was murdered in her apartment about a block away from my place. In fact, I was thinking about moving into the building next door.

It's not an easy event, no matter what the year. Because so many have been killed, the reading of the names can go on for the better part of an hour, an hour of stories of blunt force trauma, multiple stab wounds (there are always so many multiple stab wounds), multiple gunshots, genital mutilations, gang rapes, bodies being found in gutters and dumpsters and getting run over by cars over and over again... One candle snuffed out, then another, and another...

The last DOR I attended was in Los Angeles, we were in the chapel, then hearing speeches, and then reading the names of the dead. All trans-identified, all killed that year.

The particulars of each death bludgeoned me, the senselessness, it was just relentless. I was crying too much to march, and ended up on a side street with my friend Turner telling me there's nothing we can do honey. There's nothing we can do.

It's been three years since I have spoken at, or even attended, a Day of Remembrance. It's just hurt so much. Times like that day have shown me I am not the type of person to work with police officers, or tirelessly draft hate crime legislation. I’m a teacher and writer and a poet. I'm not a warrior.

So, figuring out what I am going to say has been difficult. I start to write, I get so mad, I cry. I read the deaths this year..I remember all the stories my friends go through... I hear even other queers say things about us that betray their shame and a wish that we’d go away.

Then last week my friend asked—what is it about transgenders that makes people hate you... and then I realized what I needed to say.

We can examine and focus on transphobia, say it has to do with fear of being “fooled,” or authenticity or whatever. But to accept this reason puts the problem on us. It reinforces a dangerous premise that there’s something in us that triggers someone else’s behavior—and as long as we’re trans, someone will want to hurt us because we are different.

Sure, it’s easy to feel this way, most of my trans friends just want to get on with their lives, go to the bathroom, get a job that has health benefits. But in just living our lives, we think of how we’re treated—what we’re called? How can that be human? It can seem like somehow we’re different, and the world hates our difference.

But this isn’t really true. It can’t be true! That would mean there would be no way to relate, and I can’t accept that.

So, please, understand. We do not die because we are trans people. We are killed because we are people. We are killed for the same reasons anyone else is killed. We are killed for ignorance, insecurity, blame, jealousy.

We are killed not because we aren’t human, but because we are. We are attacked because people see something of themselves in us, and it hurts. And it's not about us, it's about them.

I believe that most people have dreams of being something other than what they are—to recreate, to start over. It might not even be a sex or gender thing. Might be something like going to culinary school, or not having kids. Or saying no to the family business and becoming a photographer. Whatever. They may have been told it’s wrong, or not proper. And they listened.

Maybe be they fought at first, but eventually, they accepted the voices that said it’s not practical, not possible, not workable, it can’t be done…

And then they see us. Trans people, who seem to embody redefinition.

In being ourselves, we remind everyone that the definitions they have placed on themselves are theirs to break—that they DO have the power to change, whether they like it or not.

And some of them would rather attack us then take ownership of their own lives. Some would rather invalidate us than validate themselves. They would rather call us freaks than call themselves human. They would rather kill us than expand their lives.

To me, this explains the almost frantic hatred and crimes we face. Look at attacks against us. These aren’t just murders, they’re slaughters. They are obliterations, attempted erasures of humanity, identity, existence. It's the terror of people repressing themselves, destroying all evidence of their desire.

So what are we to do? Of course, the first thing is to stay alive. Sometimes we have to fight to protect ourselves, sometimes we have to kick and scratch and scream and pepper spray

But, beyond this, we have a choice. It feels terrible and unfair, but it’s ours to make. We can let the hate defeat us, and demonize transphobes, or we can recognize even those who hate us as human beings, and bear the responsibility born of knowing pain.

Not because we are weak —but in the long term, the best way to help ourselves is to show what it means to be human. Because it is difficult for one human being to kill another.

We need to smile and glow with humanity, so no one would dare suggest that killing one of us is anything other than taking an intelligent, feeling, thinking, soul.

We need show ourselves and whomever else might be watching that no matter how much hate has been dished out at us, that we go on, that we will laugh and thrive and pray and give thanks.

We need to love others boldly, and to love ourselves boldly as well.

We talk about trans being just a label, just a thing—not who we are—just another part. But I know trans people who have neglected parts of themselves, or even suppressed them because they were scared it made them somehow less trans. I have seen our own community try to make its own people conform to certain thoughts and actions and activities.

This is playing into the hands of those who hate us. It makes us easy to track down, and it makes being trans just another prison. We are going to survive no matter what, but to really thrive, we need to go broad, as well as deep. We need activists, but we need musicians and weavers and auto mechanics. We need strong men, but also gentle men, and sometimes men, and non-men. We need people to whom gender is serious shit, and those to whom gender is play. We need gender love as well as gender fuck. Heck, we need gender indifference.

I cry too easily for the political stuff, but I use what I can. In 2003, I started Trans/Giving, Los Angeles’ first performance series designed to foster transgender/genderqueer/intersex artists. It was my response to the DOR, to show that we are alive, we are well, and we are luminous. Trans/Giving is completely grass-roots, affiliated with no other organizations and is celebrating its 6^th anniversary tomorrow. It has nurtured and fostered not only artists, but also three sets of organizers.

My new project is Office Hours, where trans-ID’ed college professors are volunteering their time to work with trans students who are making the transition to higher education. I want to bridge the gap between trans people in the academy and those working in the community. We just launched in October!

I share my projects, only because I want you all to work on the things that make you go. Everything can help—everything must help. I want to see more poems, more paintings. But I also want to try new recipes that use mangoes. I want homemade beer. I want to see ornithologists and physicists and piano tuners and a trans-identified expert in cultivating bonsai trees. One of these days there is going to be a transgender astronaut, a transgender president, a transgender romantic lead in a Hollywood blockbuster movie.

I realize that some might have expected more talk about trans history, and various instances of oppression. Some might have expected me to examine how our deaths are reported, that even news agencies get our names and genders wrong.

But for me, transgender is not something I study. It’s my part of my identity. I live here. More than facts, I need to make peace with myself just so I can get by. Tonight, rather than reciting facts you can Google, I wanted to open my heart to you, to share some thoughts, and maybe a little insight.

We did not read the names of the dead tonight. But we didn't have to. Again, we can look up the names of the our dead on the Internet. We can read the way the people have died. In fact, I ask that you read these names. I ask that you see how brutal we can be to each other. Stab wounds, mutilations, multiple stab wounds, gang rape. 17 gunshots. Stabbed 30 times. Raped, then burned.

And yet, I even after reading these stories, ask you to become fighters, but not haters. I ask that you become strong and brave, but not bitter, or resentful.

Because one of these days, as we become a stronger and more powerful family, transgender people will face another group who views us as oppressors. In fact, it's happened already.

So even here, where we remember our dead, we must also remember that each of us is holds within us oppressed and oppressor. Even to those who hate me, sometimes I just need to say look, dude, changing your life path is terribly hard, painful work—we don't get to be this fabulous by snapping our fingers and going on Springer. Being trans is a full-time job and lots of times it sucks, so if you don't want to change your life and not rock the boat, I say more power to you—I get it. But if you ever want to change your path, and you meet resistance and violence, I will march with you.

The real march isn't something we do once a year holding a candle.

The dead are gone; we cannot make new memories. We cannot ever know them better.

However, we do have the living. The march continues tomorrow and the day after and the day after, and you hold the candles within each of you. The march will sometimes be with others, and sometimes be alone, but never alone . And in your success, your work and your benevolence, as transgender, other-gender, or allygender, you bring honor, dignity and possibility to us all.

I started with saying the DOR is held to honor the dead. However, it is not truly FOR the dead, who are finally and truly safe from earthly harm. The vigil is for you and the people next to you. The people you pass every day. Not just total strangers, but your best friends, people you think you know. Know them better. Cherish them, not by how alike they are, but how different. Cherish that they each hold life, and that their dreams and stories need not threaten you, for their lives only expand what being human means for all of us.

As I close, I ask that we consecrate this night, and honor our dead not with only with the memories and blood of the dead, but also the dreams and the joy of the living. Please, let what we do here tonight impel you to celebrate yourselves, give you the strength to realize your own goals, not just to survive, but to laugh and plan and be generous with your compassion, and let me have the honor of walking beside all of you in many many beautiful years to come.