Can You Handle It?

Sleep and I are not friends. I have to play a variety of tricks with my brain to actually get to that point where sleep is achievable. One of them is prowling through the Facebook and Twitter feeds late at night reading all the various articles and memes people have posted through the day. To the point, someone posted this link a few days ago, and it was one of those synchronistic moments where something I read matched up entirely with the haphazard jumble running through my head, specifically the first paragraph.

Have you ever been emotion-shamed before? You know what I’m talking about, has someone ever made you feel bad for being honest, for putting yourself out there and articulating your feelings to them? It’s a rare thing to do these days, to really let yourself be raw and vulnerable. We live in an age of posturing. People hide behind their phones, they carefully curate their communication with other people, which makes honest moments few and far between.

We exist in a culture where honesty has become taboo. On some level, I've known this for quite awhile. Social interactions are something I struggle with quite a bit (shocking, I know). It's difficult managing that haphazard jumble with a world that doesn't understand it, navigating irrational anxiety and all out panic while being told you just need to relax, trying to hide all the little twitches and quirks and obsessive actions you have to do so the sky doesn't cave in while people actively try to thwart you because your distress is 1. a form of entertainment and 2. not a real thing to them, and still somehow trying to keep up with all the myriad cues and nuances that, let's be honest, you don't understand one bit. But more than that the thing that trips me up most in social scenarios is honesty. I would say a good portion of my conflicts with other people come down to me giving an honest opinion that the other person didn't want to hear.

But it goes deeper than that. It's more than someone getting offended because some little flaw or idiosyncrasy was pointed out. (And, of course, no one likes that; we all get a bit ruffled when someone draws attention to our negative qualities, or something we've done wrong, but it happens.) What ends up happening is the honest statement goes under attack. You shouldn't have said that. You're just stirring up drama. You're somehow lesser for wanting to bring things to light and address whatever issue you're having. Why on earth would you want to talk things out when you could just keep them buried and hidden forever? It's so much easier to just pretend the problem isn't there.

The last one being a very frequent claim, though in my experience avoiding any sort of confrontation tends to drag it out much longer and make it generally much more unpleasant than just being up front and dealing with it. At least then it's over. Then again, I have a hard time ignoring things. It goes back to that haphazard jumble that is my thought processes (which is actually not haphazard at all, but frequently seems that way from an external perspective) and those obsessive actions and not understanding perfectly common social cues. So I try, because I've learned that people react badly to honesty. I've learned that, in general, people are happier if I go along with whatever superficial civility is in place. But eventually it breaks down and not grasping the moves of this weird little social dance wins out, and I say: I don't understand why you do this. It doesn't make any sense. Stop doing it.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Personal experiences aside, I spend a lot of time watching people. And listening to them. And the thing I hear most is, but of course I can't tell X that so I just have to deal with it.

I don't understand why you do that. It doesn't make any sense. Stop doing it.

You should be able to tell someone what you really think, and how you really feel, without the fear of being ostracised over your honesty, especially someone you're close to. A friend. A partner. A family member (well, in theory...). You should be able to hold differing views, exchange opinions, discuss what's going on and reach some sort of common ground. If the relationship is truly important - whatever it is - it should work like that. But it doesn't.

I find this preference for secrecy unsettling. Granted, I have a very biased opinion towards secrets considering my history. Keeping things hidden and closed off doesn't help anyone. It stunts the relationship, it leads to misunderstandings, it leaves people hurt and confused and feeling invalid and uncertain of their position. Secrets are damaging. Most of the time it's little damages that you don't see right off - a crack here, a little too much strain there, but it adds up. All those little things you don't say because you're afraid of a minor conflict in the present only lead to much bigger and more disastrous conflicts in the future. Yet we have created an atmosphere where not saying is more commendable, more acceptable and preferable to saying.

I don't understand. It doesn't make sense. Stop.

Be brave. Be respectful. Be honest.

Fuck Up Your Life.

I have a system for making decisions: if I'm not terrified, I'm doing something wrong.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not running around cliff jumping or swimming with sharks or sky-diving (despite the delusion of a friend that this will, actually, happen one day), but I do maintain a certain discomfort in my life. Accumulating 17 addresses in 15 years is part of that. 

This past week the topic was general advice from some of the literary greats. In the process of going around this, the familiar vision of the long-suffering and depressed artiste came up. The lecturer didn't really advocate that you have to be this tortured soul to produce great work; instead it was more along the lines of: usually the moments that leave the longest impact involve some sort of loss. 

Years and years ago, I had a drama teacher that claimed all (good) actors had a void inside themselves. It was this void, this lacking of something substantial, that allowed them to become other people. At the time it made complete sense to me, and it's been an idea that's floated around my head ever since, except expanded to all artists. If you're going to create universes, you have to have space for them to live in. You have to be missing something.

A bit more recently, I was speaking with a friend (not the one bent on pushing me out of a plane) who was concerned about not living in the moment at hand enough. My response was that no writer ever exists totally in the moment, even when they're in the moment. There's always some bit hanging back and taking notes. The Observer.

I think it's an incredibly difficult thing for writers to balance: experiencing life and creating fictitious experiences. Everything, in a way, just becomes research. Meanwhile your life carries on as if you're actually living it.

Making decisions. Quite a few of those choices I opted for because they terrified me were absolutely disastrous choices to make. They complicated my life. Things were lost or broken. People were lost or broken. But even in the worst moments, the Observer was back there taking notes. For every awful thing, I can remember of distinct moment of thinking, so this is what that feels like. Now I know. And the moments when things were going well, the moments I was content and comfortable, are always associated with an intense boredom and restlessness. A need to break away from that and turn things upside down again.

And there are consequences. I've reached a point in my life where I start saying goodbye as soon as I meet someone new, because I know I won't stay very long. I've filled my holes faster than I can possibly make them, and my life, that thing I own, most times feels a million miles away because I'm always looking through someone else's eyes.

Another friend of mine suggested once that the self-destruction most artists seem to carry with them comes from a certain over-saturation. Of living too many lives not your own and needing, at some point, to feel something that is you and outside of you and so dramatic the Observer is forced into silence, even if just for a second. And that, too, when she said it, made complete sense and started pacing around my head. I've had my own dalliances with self-destruction, with that nihilistic perspective that it doesn't really matter what happens, even, a few times, this conviction that, because I kept making it through various situations, I always would. So why try to avoid them?

At the moment, I'm putting a lot of time, effort and money into something that, ultimately, has a very slim chance of yielding the exact results I want. I've also put myself in a situation where I have to perform on demand, which is good practice but also carries that ever-present what if I run out of words?

It absolutely terrifies me.

I must be doing something right.

Leaving the Closet Door Open-ish

There are no hard and fast rules. Sometimes I do it straight out of the gate, sometimes I delay. Some of the people closest to me have had to wait years, others it’s never actually been said, but it’s known. Others, I’m sure, have no real idea at all.

            I operate on a strange sort of dichotomy: on the one hand, it’s something I will be completely open and candid about. On the other, I dance through half-truths and vagueries, dodging direct contact whenever possible. On the third (yes, three hands the magpie has, and many more, so watch your pockets and your secrets, dearies), I will attack viciously and thoroughly anyone who takes it out of my control.

            I read this thing about the repetitiveness of it, very humours. Mostly accurate. And that’s the thing: you have to do it over, and over, and over, and over, and many more times over. Forever. Maybe that’s where the dichotomy comes in. The wanting, sometimes, to just have a break. To not do it. To live in that moment where I am just like everyone else (as much as anyone is like anyone else, anyway).

            That and my abhorrence of labels – not just this one, but all of them. I shrink away with a hiss and a sneer (think Nosferatu as the sun comes up) any time one even threatens to attach itself to me.

            But labels are unavoidable. They’ll get slapped on you whether you like it or not, so you learn to cope.

            Recently, I had to do it again. This was one of those delaying times. I knew, inevitably, it would either have to be spoken or lied about, and lying is not an option. I sat back and watched and waited, and many, many times on a daily basis resolved to just get it over with only to shrink back at the last second. I told myself this was silly. I told myself there was nothing to worry about. I knew that, but knowing is different than feeling, and even when knowing you are completely sure, there is that niggle of doubt. That little voice that whispers what if that makes you hesitate. I wanted to protect this new, unexpected and precious thing that had fallen in front of me from the potential disaster of speaking the truth.

            And here you will say, well, if soandso doesn’t accept you for who you are, then what is there to protect? But those of you saying that will never have been in that position. You will never have had someone you trust, someone you love, someone you respect, someone you admire metamorphose into a crude and ugly creature wanting to tear you limb from limb for something about you that has always been there, they just didn’t know. Once you have that, you learn to fear even the ones you trust. You learn to be wary. And you learn the desperation of wanting(needing) acceptance at any cost.

            But that is the past, and this is the now. The now was not like that at all. The now was kind and practical, and Well, of course to my fumbly explanations. It was the first, the hardest, and the best of what I know will be a series of repeated exchanges, with all the new people gathering in my life. Most will not be so direct; I dislike labels, remember, and it is an incredibly difficult thing to work into casual conversation.

            But this one needed to be, deserved to be. So I put on my brave(ish) face, and walked back out with that unexpected and precious thing not only intact, but moreso than before.

(Oct 11 was National Coming Out Day [internationally recognised, mind you; words, people, words and meanings], which I did not know when I initially wrote it. Yay me for being inadvertently topical. I also almost didn't post this as it's two weeks in a row I've been unaccountably mushy. Just means next week I'm going to have to eat someone alive.)

Things Seldom Openly Admitted

I’m going to deviate a little from the norm here and not talk about myself. Okay. I will talk about myself, but mainly, this is about my sister. Explaining exactly how she is my sister is too convoluted, so just take on fact that magpies collect their families more than they are born into them.

            I have always admired her – her strength, her generosity of spirit, her energy, and, probably most of all, the ever-present grace she exudes (I know she’ll laugh at that one, but it’s true). She’s the princess of the family – and by that I don’t mean some helpless girl in a puffy pink gown. No. She is the princess who can charge in and fight when she needs to, but sees the wisdom in diplomacy first; she is benevolent and just. She is the leader you would have complete faith in to make the right decisions.

            Those things I learned about her very quickly, and they’re all qualities I hold in high regard. Truth. Loyalty. Fairness. Compassion.

            I also knew, on a cognitive level, that the things she was doing and achieving were not easy things to reach, and I admired that, too.

            Over the past few months, though, I have gained a whole new perspective on exactly how challenging those things are, and how remarkable she is – as a writer and as a person.

            Native English speakers take a lot for granted. We very rarely have to worry about not being able to communicate in our own language, even if it’s at the most basic level. Our cultures are pretty well dispersed throughout the world through media, food, the internet. Our names are generally pretty easy to pronounce (says the kid whose names are constantly mispronounced just because they’re spelled a little funny). I think most of us learn one or two other languages at some point, but very few of us bother to stay fluent (or even get to that point) once the obligatory educational demands are met. We meet non-native speakers and are astounded that they can interact so easily in a foreign language.

            (I’m sure there’s going to be some (English-speaking) person out there reading this thinking, that’s not true. I know 47 different languages and am fluent in all of them. Good for you. I’m making a point so shush. And yeah. I did just do a parentheses within a parentheses. Deal with it.)

            My sister has done her MA and is doing a Ph.D. both (and did quite well at that). And that really isn’t even scraping the surface of all the projects, networking, and creating she’s done alongside those things. And, over the years, I’ve looked at all her accomplishments with a sort of envy at the amount of energy she has to put into all of them. I knew they were hard-earned, and results that I (because ‘I’ is always the main reference point; I’m allowed to be egocentric in my own blog) would have to work equally hard to earn.

            I did not once take into consideration the additional challenge of accomplishing all these many and amazing things in a foreign language (because her foreign language is my native one, give or take some vowels), which is exactly what she did.

            A while ago, I was sitting with a group of people discussing the experience of being living abroad (which most of us are and/or had been doing), and (I’m going to paraphrase and it will not be as eloquent or succinct as it was originally said), one person said that as great as being abroad is, it’s nice to go home, because home is easy. No matter how long you live in another country, you always have to work a little bit more, you always have to be on. At home, you can just stop and go with what’s happening because it’s familiar, you know it. You don’t have to think about it. When you’re abroad, some days you just want to not think because it’s tiring.

            And it is. I don’t say that very much, because I’m an English speaker living in an English-speaking country, and for some reason people (of all sorts and cultures and languages) seem to think that that alone nullifies the foreign element.

            It doesn’t.

            Anyway, moving on. Living abroad is tough, and my sister and I had talked about this. My first year in Newcastle, actually, I’m pretty sure she saved me. Here I was this naïve little Southern boy thinking it was the thing to do to smile and say hi to everyone, and not understanding why I kept getting met by looks that indicated I might be a crazy person. I felt isolated and self-conscious, and presumed the problem was me, because no one had told me exactly how big the culture gap between the North East of England and the South-east US really is (it is a wide, gaping chasm that you will never find the bottom of, in case you’re wondering). And then she told me. No, no. I had the same experience, and this is what I learned. And suddenly, while I wasn’t necessarily happy with these new social rules, I no longer felt like a pariah. Which helped.

            This summer I broke out of my rainy little island and went to check out some other parts of Europe. Like the other aforementioned native English-speakers, I used to be fluent in French and German, but the ten years of not using it for anything at all reduced my knowledge to a smattering of basic (but useful) phrases that, coupled with the reflexive Southern smile (try it; go find a Southerner, make him/her uncomfortable and see what s/he does first) and an incredibly nice man in Paris who translated a lunch order, got me through the trip unscathed. About the third week, though, I had a mini break. A lot of the trip responsibility (namely navigating cities like an expert off-the-cuff) had fallen on me, we had a lot of long days and early mornings, and I was starting to get sick. We came back to the flat after a particularly long and very hot day, and then we had to eat dinner. No big deal, right? Food is food. But that day, the idea of going outside and fumbling my way through what was and wasn’t vegetarian-friendly seemed like an overweight behemoth perched on my shoulders. I couldn’t do it. We had to eat, obviously, but I could not make myself go back out and face that. I would have cut off limbs for something familiar and easy, even just five minutes of not having to think about everything.

            And I thought, in that moment: this must be what my sister feels. It was such a simple thing, such an obvious thing, but it had never occurred to be before because I’d never experienced it to that extent. With that little epiphany, all the respect and admiration and love I have for her just magnified. So I asked myself what she would do, then I pulled myself together and went out and fetched dinner because it needed to be done. I spent quite a lot of that trip attempting to channel her (I say attempt because she’s much more patient than I am, and nicer, and generally positive).

            Last week I had another one of those moments. I’m starting a new thing, in a new place with new people. I expected it to be harder, but the truth is, for most of my life, quite a lot of (academic) things have come easily to me, and, generally, more easily than to those around me. So I’ve done a lot of coasting. A few teachers have called me out and demanded I actually work to my full potential, but most were too busy helping those who needed it to come up with extra challenges for the kid who was already doing above average. Basically, it’s made me lazy. Yes. I am a lazy perfectionist. It is possible.

            I don’t write standard fiction. I like playing with form and structure; I’ve never been happier than when my supervisor gave me free reign to dive headfirst into experimental writing. And I’m a huge advocate of the genre-and-literary-fiction-aren’t-mutually-exclusive-camp. Which means that 1. I do still feel embarrassed when I talk to “proper” literary people about my work because their eyes sort of glaze over and you can see them just writing you off before you’ve even finished your first sentence and 2. Because of 1, I also have to work that little bit harder to be taken seriously; I have to fight for my monsters and nonlinear narrative and multiple tenses and perspectives.

            And I’d gotten comfortable. In my last life, I’d won that fight already. I could babble on about alternate timelines and supernatural powers and zombies (I don’t write about zombies, oddly, as frequently as they feature in my every day discourse) and no one questioned the least bit whether or not I could pull off a literary anything. I’d proven it multiple times so it was just taken as standard.

            In my new life, I have to go through all of that again. And I did/am. And when it happened, I felt that pudgy little behemoth climbing up my back and just the idea of waging another battle in the name of literary genre fiction made me want to just sit right down in the middle of the path and not move (I didn’t; I do know how to fake at being a grown up sometimes).

            But on that excruciatingly long walk back, I thought of my sister, who has had to fight for her work to being taken seriously every step of the way because. She doesn’t do normal things, either. She does different not-normal, but it’s outside the status quo of the literary canon, so that’s enough. I thought about how hard she’s had to fight for her work, and that she’s had to do it without anyone physically in her corner to fight with her.

            I have no idea how she does it.

            I came home and promptly called my mother (I only have to pretend to be a grown up in public) to tell me I was being ridiculous and that I am, in fact, capable of doing this thing I’m trying to do, and she did. And then my neighbour came over and did the same. And I felt better about it. So I have to prove myself a little more than the standard guys. It’s okay. I can. I will. I’ve done it before.

            But I kept thinking about my sister – every achievement she’s made, every fight she’s won, every bit of progress she’s accomplished when everything else is pushing against her – and I felt that same encompassing awe at the person she is. I know that, in her place, there would have been many times I would have just given up.

            I may never have the same patience, wisdom, and certainly not the grace that she has, but she is, nevertheless, someone I aspire to be like. I will keep trying, even if I don’t ever fully succeed. Watching her these past few years, the perseverance she has and her ability to remain undefeated – and this isn’t there haven’t been hard struggles or close moments, but, for me at least, going on through those times takes a lot more than being able to skip them – shows me that it can be done, whatever else is saying no. And, here in Zaleshkaland, all that’s needed is the faintest glimmer of a possibility to take off running.

Sometimes the Only Way Forward is to Step Back into Who You Were

There is a tricky thing to being an itinerant magpie. On the one hand you fall in love with people quickly. You have to; you won't see them for very long. On the other hand, you have to keep this distance. You know from the moment you meet that you'll be saying goodbye. Your past and your future are constantly at war with your present, which has to be the most it can be always because its existence is so fleeting.

I started my undergrad under the worst possible circumstances, or maybe just the worst possible mindset. My life as I knew it had been eradicated, not for the first time and undoubtedly not for the last, but it had been a face I'd gotten very comfortable in. So. New place. New people. New name (it helps, in a way).

Once, for someone I used to know, I wrote out all the names I've had. Quite a few were nicknames, some are only used by a select few, some no one uses anymore. There's something very sad about a name you know no one will ever use for you again.

That first year or so of building a new face, I went through several looking for the one that fit best. There's a lot of importance in names, but we never think about that. But words, and especially names, have a power all their own. They shape the thing they're put on without that thing(person) realising it's even happening.

When I came back to the States, god, ages ago now, Zane very quickly got replaced with Aleks. Zane was too soft, pliable, unprotected. Zane was for safe places, and given that, I suppose it's no surprise that now he only exists in family arenas.

Aleks I got very comfortable in. He knew who he was, knew what he wanted. He could be fearless. But starting the undergrad, Aleks had gotten far too battered to be useful. I needed a face that could bite, and hard. I found that with Aksel (see how clever that is?) but he was a little too much. Maybe I needed that then. For a moment, anyway. Somehow, through this three year evolution of names and nicknames, Saschk came into being. And that's alright. It's comfortable in a way, but there is equally something not real about Saschk. Wearing him always feels a little like walking around with a Venetian mask.

Maybe because no one knows how to say it.

This past week, though, I've got a few glimpses of that Aleks-creature peeking out from behind the Sash-mask. And it's strange, looking at this person I used to be with the (sort of) person I am now, because that's the thing about putting the two of them side by side. Aleks evolved naturally into his existence; Saschk is a construct devised solely as a means of defence. The purpose of Saschk is to keep that little bit of distance always present. On its own, without anything for comparison, I can convince myself it is a full identity. I can say with full certainty: Yes! I am Saschk! I am totally and completely authentic!

Because, being an itinerant magpie, you fall in love with your various selves as easily as you fall in love with the people around you. You have to; you never know how long you'll have to wear them.

Mostly True Things

I fell out of writing this blog for a while, primarily ‘cause y’all freaked me out. People started paying attention to what I was saying. But not only that, the wanted to talk to me about it. Horror of horrors. There’s a line from Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin): The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

And that’s true. I’d think of things I wanted to write down, things I wanted to say and thought ought to be said, but then I’d think about you. Reading it. Thinking about it. Talking about it. The funny thing about it is that all the talking was positive. If you’d come up and started arguing my points, I wouldn't have got quiet until I pointed out all the numerous ways you’re wrong, with citations and references to boot.

But all of that is beside the point, and nothing to do with anything else I have to say. So do with it what you will.

I turned 30 recently, and with that came the constant question How does it feel to be 30? To which I’d just shrug and say, like all the other ages. Which, in a way, is true. My inner timescape hasn't really advanced much in the past ten years, and I’d quite easily believe I'm still 17 or 19 (I have a thing for the odd numbers). Of course then I run into a 17 or 19 year old and think… Well, that bit’s probably best left in my head, but you can extrapolate.

Having had a few weeks to settle into the number a bit (I can deal with it being even because there’s a 3 in it; anyone who figures out why the kid with OCD likes numbers that can’t be divided symmetrically gets a gold star), I have to say it isn't really like all the other ages at all.

It could just be an arbitrary thing. The experiences of the past few years – this year in particular – all coming together at that perfect germination point to really set in. I think I've learned some things, or gotten better at them.

Letting go is one. A pretty big one, actually. I have loyalty issues, namely possessing too much of it. Generally works out great for everyone else, not so particularly awesome for me in certain instances.

Sometimes people do fucked up things, and it has nothing to do with me. It’s not my job to fix them. It’s not my job to take it just because I'm capable of taking it, or because I see they have the potential to be better. Or any of the other reasons. Sometimes, those people do fucked up things because they’re fucked up. Simple as that. And it is totally okay, in those situations, to say I Quit.

There are things that happen that I will never have explanations for, no matter how many questions I ask, how many hypothetical scenarios I run through, how many possible motivations or reasonings. Sometimes it’s because the explanations themselves don’t even make sense to anyone but the person giving them (come on, you all know at least one of those). Sometimes explanations aren't even given. Catalysts occur behind the curtain and all you see is the aftermath. Refer back to the previous paragraph.

There is a finite number of chances for redemption. Well, maybe not for redemption in general, but at least redemption as it pertains to me. Forgiveness has to be earned, for one, and it can be. Once, twice, I've even be known to allow people to earn it up into the double digits. Twice this year I've had people wander back into my life who departed under very shitty circumstances who neither wanted to bother with the earning part, or understand why I wasn't leaping for joy just to see them. Both times – and I have to say I was quite proud of myself because even so there was that little voice that said, well maybe… - I quite firmly refused. I think I finally realised that those people – the ones who circle, then throw tantrums when things don’t go exactly their way and storm off for months – those people need me more than I need them. And I'm allowed to say no, thank you. It’s not my job to fix them.

I also realised that for quite some time – possibly all of it – I haven’t been completely present in my own life. I've been over there a bit, observing and cataloguing while the physical me goes through the motions (with, admittedly, not as much grace as I’d prefer but we do what we can). All writer-y types do that to a certain extent; it’s how we do what we do. But it’s also a matter of self-defence. Like running away from my blog because people wanted to talk to me about it, wanted to engage, wanted me to actually be present.

Okay. I lied. It does relate to the beginning, but this will never be read, so I can nudge the truth. See what we’re doing now? Good.

There are these moments, though, after some reflection (usually the reflection of someone else) where I realise that a lot of things I take for granted aren't actually part of the run-of-the-mill day-to-day routine of the average person. For those moments, I am fully and one hundred percent present in my life, and it feels incredibly surreal.

A bit like when you fall asleep on the train and wake up without realising you've been asleep at all, except you've travelled x amount of miles during that very long blink so unless you've mastered time travel (which is a possibility you secretly believe, though you’ll never admit that aloud to anyone else), you must have been asleep.

I don’t particularly like it, which is probably why I very quickly retreat to my Impartial Observer guise. It’s more comfortable, though I don’t think entirely beneficial.

I'm reluctant to ascribe these realisations to a specific age, though. Everyone who turned 30 would have to realise all of these things as well for the correlation to be anything more than coincidence. There is something to looking back and seeing that, yes. I have moved forward – with my ambitions, my goals, and as an individual. Maybe it’s something you do when you turn 30 (I've only done it once, so I wouldn't know). Maybe it’s something you do any time you turn an age that is considered arbitrarily significant for reasons no one can really remember. Maybe it’s just something you do when you have mastered one of those soul-tasks you've struggled with for as long as you can remember, because there is no celebration for that. No one brings out the cake and candles for advancing as a human being – but then, most of the time we are the only ones who ever witness it. 

Of Cat.

Six years ago I made my first trip to England. It was a whirlwind trip of cobbled-together days off for my parents' wedding, that to this day exists only as a series of jet-lag hazed memories and cold. At some point during that first night, I woke up to the bed-shaking impact of a 14 lb monster landing beside me. Half-dreaming and those self-preservational instincts fumbling with the equally important sleep and warm, I looked reached down and felt out little pointy ears and a fuzzy head.

Secret agent, bed-warmer, rug-maker:
the many talents of Mr Binks

Ah, cat.

Followed by:

Big, warm cat.

Within seconds, I'd dragged the sprawl of him up to snuggle next to me.

This was how I met Binks, and it set the tone of our relationship from then on. During term breaks (particularly the winter ones), he was always to be found curled at the end of my bed, and eventually I got used to the amazingly loud snores from an otherwise mute animal (which, to be honest, never ceased to be reminiscent of a bed-monster) and the fact that a creature who only stood a fifth of my height would, nevertheless, occupy most of the bedspace.

There have always been greeting rituals with each of the animals when I come back from university. The dog grabs a shoe, or his stuffed toy and we chase each other around the back garden. My cat demands a full rundown of where I've been and what I've been doing and copious belly rubs. And Binks, in his very dignified super secret agent way, would wait until all the commotion had died down and I'd gone out for a cigarette. He'd sit beside me - a discreet 6 inches away in case any of the neighbour cats were watching - give me a quick sniff, and then we'd watch the garden together. Behind closed doors (and you absolutely mustn't tell anyone about this), I was even allowed to scoop him up and ruffle his fluffy self. He was generous like that.

Mr Binks, editor extraordinaire

Being something of a nightcreature, the quiet parts of the evening (after the sane ones had gone to bed) is always populated by cats, and dictated by their various schedules. Bast demands to be fed at 11 PM and 3 AM. Calypso will demand to go out at 4 AM, and when she's unsuccessful, does battle with anything and everything she comes across. Binks, if not already up in one of the beds, would plop himself on a spot on the couch, and progressively melt across any available space as he slept. Much like the bed. He's sat up with me through essay and novel revisions, helped me make a rug, and one night last summer, after everyone had gone to bed, when the vet had almost guaranteed Bast wouldn't make it home after taking on a dog, Binks sat with me while I cried, and let me squeeze the fluff out him while I prayed to the cat gods to fix my little cat. He was generous.

There's a thing about cats. If you have them, you know. They're a little bit mad, a little bit magic, and it's not the least bit difficult to understand why people have created myths and superstitions around them for centuries. A cat challenges and a cat remembers, and sometimes, if you're lucky, a cat will even forgive. They aren't easily bought, though, cats, and there's something about that, when you've won their respect. When you understand the language of eyes and nose twitches and head tilts.

Today was the issue launch for Aliiterati, so my alarm was set to pull me out of bed earlier than my customary afternoon waking time. This morning it went off in unison to the phone ringing. I lay up in my garret roost and listened to my step-dad answer the phone, and then go quiet. The longer the silence lasted downstairs, the further into my duvet and pillows I burrowed. These past few weeks, lying in the quiet of my garret roost and prowling around the tadpoles in the garden pond and fussing over which picture looked best where, I'd taken to whispering to the cat gods again, in the language of eyes and nose twitches and head tilts.

Fix him. Fix him. Fix him.

The silence said, this time the cat gods had declined to answer.

A short while later, my mom came up to tell me what the silence had already said. I stared at the silly pictures on my wall and felt the lack of 14 lbs of bed-monster and thought, no, he is cat and cat is invincible.

All through these past few weeks, whatever the vet has said, I've clung to that thought as stubbornly and wholeheartedly as I did when it was Bast in the hospital.

he is cat and cat is invincible. 

Of course he'll get better. Of course he'll come home. Of course.

he is cat.

Strangely, maybe appropriately, the house is that much quieter without its most silent member.

The cat who commanded dragons.

Emotional Dyslexia & the Art of Being a Professional Human

Part of my morning routine (after hitting the snooze button several times), is scrolling through the latest Twitter and Facebook posts on my phone (mostly as a way of postponing the actual getting-out-of-bed moment). Having been very thoughtfully woken by the cat at 9 AM Friday morning (who went off and put herself to sleep after ensuring that I was irrevocably awake), I signed onto Twitter smack in the middle of what read more like the plot of an action movie than anything that could happen in real life, and that niggling, indecipherable Thing that had been stirring since Monday screamed out in full force.

I missed 9/11. Sort of. I was asleep for the big stuff. The planes, the buildings. I woke up to my father's proclamation that there'd be a tragedy and the citizens of my small town panicking because an unidentified plane was circling over head and not responding to the local private airport. I remember watching the news after that and having the feeling that Something Very Bad was coming, and the people to fear weren't necessarily the Other Outside. Don't get me wrong - I felt for the people who'd died and been injured, but there wasn't anything I could do about that and in my often too practical way of looking at the world, the thing to focus on was the What Next.

I missed the Boston bombing, too. I wandered back to my flat after a day of uni and the weekly ritual TGIF and cinema around midnight and reconnected with social media. The array of posts about fortitude and resilience and other such sentiments was the first clue that something was up. Keeping up with what happens back home ("home" being used in a very broad, general sense here) is tricky these days because all the social connecting gives me more UK and US, but I'm a resourceful little scavenger and managed to dig up the fact that there'd been an explosion at the Boston marathon. The Indecipherable Thing poked its head out of the shadows and whispered something far too quiet to make out just yet, but I was uneasy. Again, falling back on my often too practical view, I pushed the uneasiness back with facts. Technically, something bad had happened back "home", but I don't know anyone in Boston. It's pretty far away from my point of origin, and it's really far away from where I am now. But the Indecipherable Thing kept staring.

I lurk around Amanda Palmer's internet space with a sporadic dedication. She's talented, intelligent, and more often than not, gives me hope for the human race by reminding me there are decent people out there working to remind people there are still decent people. Last night, I wandered over, read through her recent blog posts, and the Indecipherable Thing was named:

"i bet the world is going to get worse now because people are going to start yelling and doing more bad shit to each other."

That was it. That was the thought I had 12 years ago watching the news and the government and the people around me getting more and more frantic in their fear and hate. That was the thing I'd been uneasy about for the past week. People are going to start yelling and doing more bad shit. And it made me wonder if we're ever going to get past that, if there's ever going to be a moment again when bad things happen and we aren't terrified that the world we know has turned into something awful and different and scary.

The weeks before Boston, I'd spent a lot of time dodging any form of social media and had gotten pretty damn close to hiding every person in the UK I know because I couldn't handle what was being said there. For those who don't know, Margaret Thatcher died. That day, and the day after, I walked away from the internet. I didn't get it. I don't get it. From my perspective, an old woman with dementia died, and regardless, that fact kept making me remember sitting next to the bed of an old man with dementia not knowing what to say to all the people trying so hard to be kind while wishing they'd stop.

The personal memory-trigger aside, I couldn't reconcile so many people I knew, respected, admired, and loved putting so much energy into pouring so much hate into the world over the death of another human being. In a conversation with my mother that afternoon, I tried to pin down exactly what about it bothered me, how I thought people should be acting instead. The closest I came was to say: It lacks professionalism - that unspoken code of behaviour we all (or most of us) automatically put on -  if there can be such a thing as a professional human being. Though it might not be such a bad thing if we all brought a little more professionalism to our personal lives.

Death makes me uncomfortable because it's emotional. Grief I don't particularly understand well. A lot of the finer emotions I don't understand well. A classmate and friend of several of my family members and friends died the week before and I felt incredibly awkward about it. I didn't know what to say to them when they talked about it, so generally I didn't say anything. I've found that's the safest option. Usually. But even with my emotional dyslexia, I can't escape the fact that whatever my feeling (or lack thereof), this is a person.

And that was what I thought while watching the celebrations of Margaret Thatcher's death. I can't comprehend hating someone that much, let alone someone I don't know personally. The worst I can manage is a certain ambivalence. Trying to reconcile my feelings about the people in question with their actions, which in my slightly off-kilter perception were no less than morally abhorrent, has been a difficult process that I haven't quite resolved within myself. It has, however, made me think a lot about hate, and about the difference between who a person is and what a person does.

People have the ability to do some truly horrible things, and sometimes they act on this ability. Does that automatically make them a horrible person? Are we ever able to judge who is good and who is bad, who is deserving of mercy and forgiveness and who should be condemned without consideration? Are any of us ever completely free of blame and guilt? If you were standing in public trial, what would you wish they didn't know, and who would you want to cast the deciding vote?

That's the tricky thing about morality, and it's something that makes living with humanity particularly difficult for me. My morality doesn't have shades of grey. The world does. The world is coated in shades of shades so fine only the most discerning eye can spot the difference. This isn't to say I haven't violated my own moral code, or that I haven't forgiven Sins in the Eyes of Sashi in others. But there's a certain... Need for consistency of intent, I suppose.

Nothing is accomplished by matching hate with hate. Spewing out vitriol and spite because you dislike someone's actions doesn't fix anything. It doesn't make you better than your target, and it doesn't lend any more strength to your argument. When people do things - petty things, awful things, downright tragic things - what's needed is dignity and decency. People who have the strength to, not necessarily forgive, but rise above whatever wrong's been done and, for lack of better phrasing, take that too practical view.

Maybe the negativity is nothing new. Maybe it's the internet. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's all this talk about the importance of the individual and taking care of the common good and all those other things they say that contradict and complicate but.

There's just so much of it.

I've been paying more attention to what people post lately. Their link shares and likes and status updates. In all honesty, if it weren't for certain obligations, I'd have flipped the switch on social media months ago. There's the negativity. The hypocrisy. The you have to respect me and my views but I can hit below the belt any time I want and that's okay. The propaganda. The knee-jerk reactions. The fear. The conspiracies. The it's so cool to be jaded and hard. The jokes that aren't offensive because it's just a joke and you're being too sensitive. The competition for who can be more right. The hackles raising so I can bite first even when no one's attacking because I've been taught that's how the world works. The rumours. The fighting. The absolute, inexplicable joy in hate.

Hate directed at total strangers. Individuals you maybe know a handful of things about, or maybe just one thing. Generalised groupings of anonymous faces you heard something about that may or may not be true. Or maybe just had a bad experience with one member of that group, so that means they're all bad.

How does that not exhaust you?

I don't have it in me to hate. I don't know why, but I don't. I've tried. There are a few people I'd really like to hate, but I can't do it. Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. But I get caught on the other perspective and playing devil's advocate. I can usually see where another person is coming from, how they made certain conclusions and why they made certain decisions. I may not agree with them. I may not like them. But it makes them human, and once you see someone as a human being - as a person just like you with fuck ups and flaws and wants and needs and insecurities and favourite foods and families and pet gerbils - it makes it really, really hard to hate.

This particular inability of mine has drawn more flak and criticism than any of my other shortcomings. Something about that just doesn't seem quite right. 

Seeking a Little Less Authenticity

I spent most of today rolling around a concept for a blog that was somewhat (very) introspective and self-indulgent... and then I stepped into the wonderful world of the internet and promptly changed my mind.

A long time ago, I had a discussion-bordering-heated argument with a former collaborator on the topic of authenticity in relation to writing. He claimed, first, that to be a good writer you have to experience life. Fair enough. If nothing else, getting out in the world and seeing what happens in it is pretty good at triggering those what if questions. He went on from there, though, and asserted that writing could only be worthwhile if it was authentic, meaning if the person writing had actual first-hand experience of the thing s/he was writing on. His assertion was that authenticity always trumped talent, and the only way a writer could evoke the proper response, could convey something accurately enough, was if it had actually happened to them.

I respectfully and quite adamantly disagreed.

Much of my time is spent reading, critiquing and, yes, judging the work of amateur writers. There's quite a lot of talent in the amateur sect; what I'm about to say is by no means to imply there isn't.

But.

Yes, but. Among that wide and motley assortment of individuals penning their works between jobs and classes and families, and maybe even at the occasional stoplight, there is a particular strand that latches onto this idea of writing the authentic experience (we're talking fiction here, by the way, non-fiction is a different kettle of fish entirely). Most of the time, this centres around emotion in an equation that looks something like this:

words + strong emotion = talent/something worth reading

No. Sorry. It does not. Your angst is not art. The ability to experience emotion does not make you an artist; it makes you human. The ability to evoke emotion in someone else with something you create makes you an artist. 

Most of the time, when it comes to this subject, I keep my mouth shut. Surprisingly, on occasion, apparently I come across as not quite so soft and fluffy, or very coddling of sensitive egos. I'll openly admit I don't have much patience for baby writers, and I'm more likely to say please never write anything but a grocery list again than sugarcoat the garish flaws with noncommittal statements. So, being aware of this aspect in myself, I stay well away from the "emotional" writers. They tend to be sensitive and, well, emotional. I don't take them seriously as writers because they don't take their writing seriously. 

This evening in my traipsing about the internet as my "reward" for being so very studious all weekend (this is what I'm going with; I dare you to prove otherwise), I came across this question:

Does a person's creativity go hand in hand with emotional, mental, or physical turmoil? 

Disappointingly, but expectedly, the yeses had the vote. This pretty much epitomises the issue I have with "authentic" writing, "emotional" poets writers, and that very troublesome stock phrase "write what you know".

One person cited, in support of the pro argument, the sheer volume of love poetry written (so much so, in my opinion, that finding a love poem these days that doesn't make you want to slit your wrists with a Hallmark card is a bit like waking up to a unicorn in your living room), because it's a universal experience (I'm paraphrasing). The same person went on to say: "Why is there so much "emo" poetry written? Because it is an intense feeling that is felt so completely that it is easy to describe in words." Someone else claimed that one could truly write about the feeling of grief without experiencing it first; anything else is just speculation.

Oddly no one mentioned how the experience of losing a thumb or an ear really boosted their creative output.

Alliterati's Anti-V Day Competition

[I'm taking a moment out to do some shameless promotion for one of my favourite projects. Show some love for Alliterati. -SD]

It's February and we all know what that means, whether you love it or hate it.

Valentine's Day.

So, in the spirit of pink hearts and frilly cards, <em>Alliterati</em> is launching a 14 day contest beginning 1 February and ending midnight 14 February (whenever 14 February ends for you). The top three art and literature pieces will be featured in our upcoming issue (released 1 March). Please review all the requirements before you submit!

<u>Rules</u>
<ol>
<li> Must fit the anti-Valentine's Day theme. Interpret that however you wish. If you want write up a spectacular horror story, or turn a traditional love concept on it's head, go for it. Be as inventive and creative as you want. We like that. </li>
<li> All art forms accepted - film, photography, traditional/digital art, sculpture, crafts, poetry, prose, script, the list is endless. </li>
<li> No limit to the number of submissions, but please attach each submission as a separate file. </li>
<li> Prose should be no more than 1500 words; poetry no more than 40 lines; scripts no longer than 10 minutes. </li>
<li> Include a short bio in the body of the email. </li>
<li> Submissions should be emailed to <a href="mailto:editor@alliteratimagazine.com">editor@alliteratimagazine.com</a> with the subject header "ANTI-V DAY COMPETITION".</li>
</ol>

<u>Formatting Guidelines</u>
<ol>
<li> Literary submissions should be sent as a .doc or .PDF attachment. </li>
<li> Images must be at least 300 dpi and 1200X1200 pixels, formatted as .JPG attachment.</li>
<li> Include your name and the tile of your work in the file name. </li>
</ol>

Keep up with the competition on <a href="https://twitter.com/AlliteratiMag" title="Twitter" target="_blank">Twitter</a> (#antivday) for random quotes, inspiration and motivation found just for your enjoyment.

And don't forget: we are accepting submissions for Issue 10 until 10 February, so there's still time to get yours in! Check out our <a href="http://alliteratimagazine.com/submissions/">Submission Guidelines</a> to get yours in.

'We are bound by the secrets we share.'

I've been doing some mental pacing lately, that sort of restless, twitchy sense you get when you're about to start something, but aren't quite sure what that something is yet because the little machines are still whirring away in your subconscious mind piecing it all together. You just know, soon. So you flip through mindless TV channels, and ponder the fluctuating number of followers on your Twitter feed, and try to keep up with the discordant, ambiguous excitement about that thing you can't quite place your finger on while tossing what if ideas at friends and family who very tolerantly pat you on the head and say very good, little magpie.

Recently my magpie tendencies have turned from merely collecting insignificant nuggets of information to the shiniest of the shines: stories. In truth, it was inevitable, and likely the true aim, given a background fostered in occupying various spaces while accounts were told of particular events that in reality lasted only perhaps minutes, but took three or four times longer to tell with diversions into this history or that, indulgences to side-stories and explanations, interrelated and not. What little magpie nurtured on such detailed personal accounts could possibly resist the allure of finding more? 

Not this one, which is, perhaps, the only answer that matters, because this is the magpie in question. Fascinated with collecting stories, and slightly amazed that it took this long and travelling so much distance to realise that. The subject of my loosely-defined future Ph.D. will revolve around this, there is a collaborative art project in the works for potentially (hopefully) next year, but none of that is quite immediate enough for the restless, pacing mental creature anxious to get his twitchy little hands on something tangible. 

I intend to make a mobile of secrets. 

But I need help. I need your secrets. 

The idea is to get as many people as possible to send me their secrets - good, bad, things you hope for, things you're afraid of, things you're ashamed of, those little thoughts you have but never say, wish you'd said, wish you hadn't said - by post, because I'm a big believer that we leave little pieces of ourselves with everything we touch, and I like the idea of (literally) tying strangers together in something real and solid, outside the detached sterility of this internet world. And I like getting mail. (Who doesn't?)

Then all those pieces of paper with things written on them will be folded into various things, probably related to themes or tones, because I like patterns and symmetry like that, and hung on a dreamcatcher-esque styled mobile. I have more vague concepts about doing something with the actual words themselves, but if the secrets are shared, they'll be shared anonymously so no one will know it's yours except you, and me. 

I'm not one to ask for something for nothing, though, so if you share with me, I'll send you a story back. By post. Because you know you like getting mail, too. 

To join in, drop me an email at sashdrak@gmail.com and I'll give you more specifics on what to do. And share. There's no limit to the number of people who can join in. Besides, what better way to meet new people than passing a few secrets back and forth? 

Double-Consciousness and Identity

I've reached one of those phases of thought where there are too many things running parallel and not enough outlets to get them all out. I keep coming back, though, to a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois, though:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
 

I've been reading his work lately, one of those things I always thought I should read that, and then through the fortune of university reading lists, I actually did. There are a lot of great quotes in Du Bois writing, a lot of relevant quotes, but his perspective on living with a sense of double-consciousness, double-identity, of being The Other and Not-Other at the same time, resonated in particular with me. Much of my life has been spent on a fairly haphazard quest of finding a place to fit. I've found a few that come close, a few that I could make myself comfortable if need be, but in the end there is always that nagging sense of displacement and not-belonging that tumbles my life back into suitcases.

I am most wholly American when I am nowhere near America, most likely, I think, because my audience lacks a side-by-side comparison so by virtue of accent and birth, the lable sticks unquestioned. As an expat I get told frequently that my actions, ideas and perceptions are "very American"; in my own country, however, I am more often accused of being "un-American". In truth, inside or outside it, I always feel like an outsider. The longer I spend away, the more I want to go "home" (a very loose term that is only used to the extent of "that place I came from"). The longer I'm there, the more I realise the truth that everyone who has ever left home and gone back knows: the act of leaving irrevocably detaches you, changes you, and even if you return for good, you will still be one who has left and gone back, not one who has simply stayed. After spending nearly half my life wandering across the Atlantic, both and neither feel like home; the only time I have ever felt that sense of "going home" that's usually associated with childhood haunts and fond memories is stepping into an airport terminal. If there were a way to live poised somewhere over the Atlantic, that would probably be the place for me.

I'm an American, an expatriate, a Southerner (which could be said is almost a "national" identity in itself), and, according to a joke between a friend and I, even an alien (a joke inherited from my father, ironically, since it drove me crazy when he said it, but also a play on the no-longer-PC term). But do any of these things actually say anything about my identity as a human being? I remember, several years ago, driving to work and being stopped at a light behind a car that had a bumper sticker that read: "Be American! Stand up for America!" For the five minutes or so I sat behind this car, I pondered what that meant, and by the time I reached work, I still didn't have any conclusions. So I asked my boss, who is a fairly intelligent and knowledgeable man, though he didn't have any better ideas. To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what the writer of that bumper sticker really intended to convey. In my mind, all you have to do to be an American is be born there. The make-up of that country is so fluid and diverse, pinning it down to anything more specific inevitably results in huge chunks of the population falling well outside the pale.

At the same time, while acknowledging and accepting my national identity as an American, I also have to acknowledge that I am not American. I can't be. By virtue of some of the other labels ascribed to me, I am not equal to other Americans. I'm not entitled to the same legal protections or level of healthcare. I don't have the same assurance of safety from harassment and discrimination when it comes to civil rights, employment, or even walking on the street or into a shop. So how can I be an American if I am also told that I must complacently accept that I am inherently less?

This is by no means solely the arena of the queer community. It's not a matter of queer vs. not-queer because the L, G, B, T and Q can't seem to thoroughly unite themselves, and have their own forms of isolation and discrimination. Even those groups who have attained legal equality still find themselves shoved back by persistent social inequality, whether it's their race, religion, sex/gender, or something else entirely. It amazes me sometimes how thoroughly determined humanity is to fracture itself into so many divisive little groups, instigating hate and fear over some of the most ridiculous and inconsequential traits. It amazes me quite often how determined humanity is to hate, to be angry and spiteful, and to take great pride in that.

I suppose this peculiar sensation of double-consciousness is one of the things that makes me wary of - okay, stubbornly opposed to - attaching labels to myself. Why should I accept a label that will not accept me back, or will only accept me under certain conditions? More importantly, why should I endorse a viewpoint that will only perpetuate the reduction of my self to a single word, a broad generalisation that chafes and pinches in all the wrong places and dilutes the right ones to a bland homogeny? Why should anyone?

The Language of Hate

I'd intended to write a post about what exactly "free speech" means. I started it. I had quotes from the EU Charter, and all sorts of very carefully thought out points and good intentions of sharing knowledge with the world at large. But then I realised: there are more of you than there are of me, and I ran out of steam.

I love information. I love facts and trivia and just knowing things. The most exciting thing in the world is stumbling across a trove of information about a subject I didn't know anything about before, or meeting with someone who holds a completely different perspective who can speak about it rationally and intelligently. My friends and family, at times, get annoyed by this quest for information, the barrage of questions that comes when I'm faced with something I don't understand. New friendships go through a teething period where I have to explain: I just want to understand. Most established friendships have reached the point where they know they have to say: Too much information, Sashi.

I forget that not everyone is like this. Some people are told a particular thing, and they're happy with that explanation. They feel no need to investigate further and break it down to it's smallest parts. That's not a criticism of those people. It's not saying that mentality is less than mine. I don't understand it, but I'm sure there are many out there who don't understand how I can get completely lost in researching the minutiae of the evolution of spiders (as an example).

My first reaction when confronted with an opposing viewpoint is to evaluate it for credibility. Is it stated in a clear manner? Are there facts to back up that position? Are those facts verified by unbiased sources? If the answer to any of those questions is "no", I ask questions. Hell, I ask questions, anyway, but that's besides the point. If I find weaknesses or flaws in the argument, I point them out, and usually have a handful of resources to pass on, because that's my way of being helpful. If I wrote something littered with inaccurate information, I would hope that some kindly person would come along and say so. If they offered resources, all the better. More information for the magpie!

So when things like Julie Burchill's article come along, I find myself profoundly baffled. (You can read my my response to the article in a previous post.) I don't generally understand hate, particularly impersonal hate. (This is another trait that often tests the patience of friends and family; I can't count the number of times I've heard how can you defend that person? - simple: I don't have enough information to judge.) Hate, I think, takes an awful lot of energy. It also doesn't seem particularly productive. So to see so much hatred crammed into so few words temporarily short-circuited the language centres in my brain. I just couldn't process it. So I went back and tried to ferret out the purpose of the article. I tried to find some reason in it.

I couldn't.

Apparently neither could a lot of other people, and the article has since been taken down. Now Twitter is awash with cries of injustice and the infringement of free speech, the oppression of journalists, etc. ad nauseam. Again, I spent several hours watching the Twitter feed throw up claim after claim that Burchill is completely within her right to express her opinion, trying to wrap my head around the fact that a very essential fact was being overlooked: freedom of speech is not a limitless pass to say whatever you please in whatever form you wish. The issues was not in Burchill's opinion, but in her language. There are many, many ways she could have addressed what she felt was an injustice to Suzanne Moore in a composed and dignified manner, without reducing a very wide and diverse community to the cheapest insults. In fact, many of the people targeted by her article addressed her in just such a composed and dignified manner.

Freedom of speech does not protect you against libel, slander or sedition (among other things). Beyond that fact, however, is the matter of personal responsibility. Even if hate-speech were protected under freedom of speech (it's not; countered by the rights to dignity, safety, and protection from discrimination), and even if her article hadn't been littered with factual inaccuracies about the transgendered community, where is the personal responsibility involved in dredging up and perpetuating so many stereotypes that a highly discriminated against minority (and its allies) have fought long and hard to try to correct?

But, enough of that. Burchill is not the only culprit, and the fact is: I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting. I'm tired that I have to fight. I'm tired of scrambling to make my voice heard among the cacophony of anger, hatred and ignorance that just feed each other. I am tired of wanting to shut myself away from the world because everyone is screaming and no one is listening.

I'm an American. I live in the UK. If I criticise the British (though I tend to specify 'English' because those are the people I'm around), I am brushed off, ridiculed, or slapped with the label "insert negative adjective American". Sometimes all I have to do is ask why they do a particular thing here to get the same result. At the same time, I hear a constant barrage of criticisms and derogatory statements about Americans with varying levels of legitimacy. I'm not allowed to contradict these statements, either, though, because again I'm just being a "insert negative adjective American". I have one lecturer who somehow manages to include at least one derogatory statement about Americans per lecture - I'm actually a bit amazed at her ability to slip these in considering the lectures have nothing to do with Americans or the United States. No one speaks up. I don't even speak up. Why? Because I have been taught that pointing out that something is offensive is wrong.

We've all been taught that. If you're offended by someone's statement, you're minimised and illegitimised. You're told that you're just "too sensitive"; others are told that you're "throwing a tantrum" or "having a hissy fit". At best, you are patronised and pandered to, if not out and out attacked.

Back home, guns are a big topic at the moment. Every time there's a school shooting, guns are a big topic. Except. Is anyone talking about the propensity in American society for individuals to take guns into public places and shoot people they don't know for no particularly identifiable reason? No. Everyone is screaming "Don't take my guns away!" because it was mentioned that part of solving this quandary of public shootings might be examining the gun control regulations already in place. The real issue - why this happens so frequently in our country - is completely ignored.

What does that have to do with hate? Well, my dears, it's very simple. It becomes a form of hate. Meme posts depicting liberals as illiterate idiots for wanting stricter gun control laws, sensationalist articles written on both sides to further their agenda, two camps of people screaming bile at each other and no one bothering to listen.

Pick any topic and you'll see it - over and over these cycles of animosity impeding the channels of reasonable discussion, impeding progress and resolution, impeding acceptance and peace.

Don't you ever want it to just stop? Don't you get tired of it?

When are we going to stop reducing each other to impersonal labels and accept that we are all human? We are all vulnerable. We are all flawed. We all want the same things - safety, health, happiness. The rest doesn't matter. Strip us down to the barest principles and we are all the same. Why can't we talk to each other? Why can't we come together and work towards finding practical solutions to the issues - whether it's the issue of a journalist who abuses her role or the vast number of people without food or ensuring everyone has access to adequate health or - dear god there are so many problems to fix in this world, why are we wasting so much time slinging childish insults back and forth?

When are we going to stop hating?

Open Letter to Julie Burchill

(In response to the article Transsexuals should cut it out)

I am a twenty-nine year old university student, writer and editor, and I am transgendered. There are a number of situations that fall under that category, but in my case it means that I am male, but happened to be born physically female. There was never a moment when it “occurred” to me that I was male; I always knew it. I was confused for a long time about why I wasn’t treated like the other boys as a child, and around sixteen there was the realisation that I wasn’t the only person to experience this, but that’s probably the closest I’ve come to any sort of “revelation”. For the past eleven years, I’ve undergone HRT, surgery, and jumped through every single hoop that’s been placed in front of me with an acceptance, strength and grace that most people never have to discover they possess. You, Ms Burchill, I’m sure have never had to discover the depths of those traits in yourself, because if you had, you would know how to present yourself better.

The language in your article is beyond inappropriate, and displays a level of ignorance, bigotry and unprofessionalism that anyone speaking in a public forum should be ashamed to exhibit.

The term “tranny” is not just “wrong”; it is a derogatory term at the same level as calling someone a “fag”, “nigger”, or any other slur meant to demean and degrade a particular group. The term “cis” is an abbreviation for “cisgendered”, which means a person’s self-perceived gender identity matches their sex. “Cis” itself comes from Latin and means “on the same side”.

Transwomen are not “imagined” women. They aren’t less than any other woman (or man), and the problems they face are certainly not any less trivial. The sheer amount of strength and bravery it takes a transwoman to walk out her door every day and live her life knowing full well that every day she does that may be the day someone ridicules her, assaults her, or even kills her is something that should be commended and respected. Could you be that brave? Every. Single. Day. For the rest of your life. Quite possibly without your family or a strong support network to stand behind you. Knowing that if something does happen, and you report it, there’s a good chance the authorities won’t even take you seriously. Could you do that?

I come from a working class background, raised by a single mother in an area of the United States where the career prospects were Wal-Mart, telemarketing or working at the sawmill. I have been discriminated against for being female, for being male, for being transgendered and my sexuality by men, women, gay, straight, employers, healthcare providers, police, bartenders – the list goes on. I had one family member ask me to pretend I had a twin sister so she wouldn’t have to explain what transgendered means to her children. I had two police officers laugh in my face the night my ex almost killed me because, while they could just barely hold a straight face for a domestic between two “fags” (and yes, they used that word), there was no way they could take a fag and a tranny seriously. I had one employer who tried to refuse to hire me on the basis that he perceived I was gay; I had the Human Resources manager at another employer refuse to recognise the name and gender of another transgendered employee, even though legally it’s required. The first person I spoke to about being transgendered called me a demon. One of my ex’s parents referred to me simply as “it” and “that thing”. I have lost friends because they couldn’t accept it. I have been belittled, discriminated against, rejected, harassed and abused solely because of something I was born with. I have had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way just so I can walk out my door every day and have a “normal” life. In the United States, insurance companies can – and do – deny me health coverage because I have a “pre-existing condition”; here in the UK, I’ve been on a waiting list for three years to treat a hormonal imbalance that should be simple to solve with access to an endocrinologist because gender clinics don’t have enough funding and GPs don’t have enough experience. I’ve experienced a lifetime of PMT and sexual harassment to boot, so look me in the eye and tell me I don’t know what it is to struggle.

I’ll tell you – all of that – I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve had it easy, by comparison. I’m androgynous enough that most people have no idea that I’m transgendered. I haven’t been disowned by (most) of my family. I haven’t been raped. I haven’t been beaten beyond recognition. I haven’t been killed. I haven’t killed myself. I walk out my door every day knowing exactly the risks I face – that day might be the day the wrong person finally cops on, and anything could happen. But I do it, and I don’t ask for anything more than any other person in the world – to be treated with respect. I don’t resort to name-calling when confronted with people I don’t agree with, or people I just don’t understand. I treat other people the way I expect to be treated. Maybe you should try it.

Next time you want to speak about a group of people, educate yourself first, and then try to act like an adult. 

Esse Est Percipi

I used to have a friend who hated his job, his economic situation... Most of the things about his life when it comes right down to it. He wanted to be alternative. He wanted to be an artist. He wanted normal, mainstream society to accept him exactly as he was. Bitterness, resentment and the general "unfairness" were pretty common themes in the frequent monologues about how his civil liberties were infringed upon because they wanted him to dress a certain way. He wanted all of these things for his life, but he lacked the one very vital part of achievement: doing something about it.

We're not friends anymore more or less because I pointed out this very thing. You are not a helpless bystander in your life. If you want something, you have to get off your ass and go after it. Apparently that's not a nice thing to say, but we all live and learn.

Or not, because I'm going to say the exact same thing to all of you. (Yeah, I was the kid who had to get burned five times before I learned the lesson about hot things; in my defense they were all different hot things.)

This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately, particularly coming to the end of my degree and going through the process of applying to start another one. I watch people quite a lot - though this is actually a misnomer. People-watching is usually more people-listening because strangers do not like it when you stare at them for too long.

"No one appreciates me."

Of course they don't. Why should they? How are they supposed to know you even exist? I know quite a few artists (henceforth a collective term for anyone doing anything relating to the arts, not just visual), so this complaint comes up a lot. I know some exceptional artists who bust their asses putting themselves out there, networking, jumping through all the hoops, and get maybe a tenth of the attention they actually deserve based on talent. I know some meh-to-mediocre artists who do all the same things with the same amount of effort put into selling themselves, and get about the same results.

But that's not fair! the masses (who remain largely unnoticed because they make themselves noticed) cry out. Well. Fuck fair. No one is going to see your poetry/paintings/videos/songs/photography/etc. if you only put it on Facebook for your friends to see. No one is going to seek you out and help you succeed. I don't know how many times I've heard I'd love to be published (usually immediately following the mention that something I've done is appearing somewhere, because people are nice like that), and every time I do, I think (and, yes, usually say): so do something about it.

Yes, yes, before you all start screaming at me that it's not that easy, I know. Being a published writer is fucking difficult and has quite a bit to do with luck and self-marketing, but it's damn near impossible if you don't put yourself out there to begin with. You don't get to whine about it not happening if you aren't trying to make it happen.

The same thing applies to just about anything you want in life. Being a good person isn't going to ensure you get rewarded. (Neither does being a bad person, contrary to popular belief, though this group does seem to have less guilt associated with self-promotion so I'm sure that doesn't hurt.) Being talented, intelligent, or whathaveyou isn't going to do it either. You've got to get out there and work your ass off for it, and even then there's no guarantee you'll be as successful as you want to be. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are a hell of a lot of people hanging around on this planet, and every single one of them has some big ambition or aspiration. It might not be exactly the same as yours, but I'm sure there's enough out there to give you some competition. And those people might be better, smarter, more talented, more charismatic, wealthier... Or they might not be. If you never step outside your comfort zone, it won't matter. They've already beaten you.

Some people get very bitter about all of this. Somewhere along the line, they've gotten it into their heads that society owes them something because... I don't know. Inflated sense of self-importance, maybe? I don't know. I suppose if you really see it that way, it would be fairly easy to resent people who do succeed.

That person I mentioned earlier? Used to expression envy towards me quite a bit, and go on about how lucky I am to have the opportunities I have. And every time I said: it's not luck, it's work. You could do exactly the same things. There are plenty of people who put in the same amount of work and have all the same opportunities I do. Hell, there are plenty of people who put in way more effort and get even more opportunities. And it hasn't been easy. It's meant starting over in a new place more times than I might have liked, turning down social activities to stay home and work. I rang in the new year by frantically doing some last minute (literally) edits to Trinity before sending it off to meet a deadline, as a matter of fact. I have no idea if anything will even come of that, but I did it, because you can be damn sure nothing would have come of not doing it.

The world doesn't owe me anything. If I don't succeed, it's because someone else worked harder for it. If I do, I can look at the sacrifices I've made and the work I've done, and actually be proud of my efforts. And I'm okay with that.