Author Archives: charissagrace

Anonymous: Her Blood is on your Keyboard

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Constance…I am sobbing deeply right now.  Another transgender person dead, dysphoria eats another one of us, and what’s worse but not at all unusual is the way that the cis-world egged her on.

I cannot imagine the cruel hearts of the people who said such horrible things to her.

But I will be blunt:  everyday, you need to remember that most transgender people are treated with staggering othering and policing.

I myself am shunned, and my history is distorted and fabricated.  My narrative is hijacked in service of a myth that allows people to feel good about the indifferent uncaring way they choose to live.

It weighs on a person, it does.

Constance, everywhere around you someone is suffering, someone is laboring.  How about just be kind?

Please?

Someday you will wish you had been, if you’re lucky.

Trans woman, 23, kills herself after being attacked online | Gay Star News.

Trans woman, 23, kills herself after being attacked online

#HerNameWasRachel
27 APRIL 2015 | BY JOE MORGAN
RIP Rachel Bryk.

A young trans woman has killed herself after being attacked online.

Rachel Bryk, 23, jumped off the George Washington Bridge, the bridge between New York and New Jersey, on Thursday night (23 April)

An eyewitness is believed to have seen the young woman leave her purse on the bridge and jump off into the Hudson River.

Bryk’s body has still not been recovered. A funeral will be planned when her body is found.

Her shocked mother Lisa Bryk, from New Jersey, found out on Friday morning.

‘She was super smart, really good with computers,’ she told Gay Star News. ‘We’ll miss her.’

Bryk was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at a young age and lived with chronic pain. This meant she was unable to get a job or keep to a regular schedule.

She found her life in anime, nerd culture and computing. She helped develop an emulator that allows you to play Gamecube and Wii games on your PC.

But because Bryk was talented, and hard-working, and open about being trans, it meant she left herself open to online attacks.

When she said on 4chan that she was considering killing herself, she did not receive support.

‘DO IT, if you’re such a weak willed thin skinned dipshit then fucking do it,’ one anonymous commenter told her.

Even in her death, some on 4chan have described it as a ‘victory’. On news of her death, some commented that she was the ‘whiniest fucking faggot’ and ‘any tranny death is good riddance’.

Such comments clearly left Bryk severely depressed, who would often call herself ‘worthless trash’ on her Ask.fm page. Her Twitter bio page read: ‘[Trigger Warning]: suicide on everything i say.’

At Friday midnight, this was posted on her Twitter.

Rachel Bryk Tweet

The people Bryk worked with mourned her.

‘She will be missed greatly by everyone. We are stronger, better people thanks to knowing her,’ one said.

And another: ‘Rachel was more than just a great programmer. She was a great programmer who always managed to put a smile on my face. I don’t think that there ever will be anyone else quite like her. Rest in peace.’

When we asked Bryk’s mom how the family dealt with her daughter’s transition, she said: ‘It caused a lot of worry, because the world is not a kind place for people who are different.’

If you are considering suicide, please call the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255. The LGBT National Helpline is on 888-843-4564, with the Youth line on 800-246-7743.

– See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/trans-woman-23-kills-herself-after-being-attacked-online270415#sthash.jcThC57T.kXWTRJ3X.dpuf

Spring Grey Me

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here…coffee and cats, warm and sweet
and the window thin and clear
between me and out there
clouds close and quiet
and laying soft, snuggling over rainy earth

and you, thoughts of your life
snuggling in the base of my throat
sweet and thick, hurty-hearty present
and I morosely serene…staring
out the window at this grey new
spring morning.

thinking of beach bright you,
spring grey mesgm

Kánte Dikaiosýni̱s.  Agápi̱ Éleos.  Perpatí̱ste Tapeiná.
Charissa

Haunting Beauty, Redux

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it has long been rumored
there was a night, that night
when Juliek, on brink of death
played Beethoven so hauntingly
in the dark for dying men, starved,
doomed to meet dark doom so soon
but regaled in that lurking dark
with beauty’s fire unquenchable…2008-5-10 Auschwitz No 5 - 6-24-2008 750I heard he played his violin
as if his very life was song
and offered as sacred lament
for each life draining there,
for each life straining there
on every holy note eternal,
every sacred note, sublime…

I heard the guards were sullen
and secretly afraid,
I heard they occupied that purgatory place
between beauty and brokenness
untouched by either one
and thus forever damned
until time finally ends…tumblr_nmaugjGTCt1u19ezpo1_400But some of them were haunted
then, always ever after
by beauty’s power to stop them
from ever being blind again
to human hearts and faces
to human agony,
to God’s beauty unstoppable
and to the aching horror of
the absence of plain beauty…

That common ache within us?
that longing inexplicable,
seemingly accidental
seemingly mere abstraction
but pregnant hot inside us
for such great transformation
that we can rest assured forever
that beauty is not accidental
beauty is not random,

but Divinely Transcendent
Transcendent and Eternal
Oh Beauty, Haunting Beauty.tumblr_nlmnsxwovO1thfeewo1_400

Haunted, Haunting Beauty

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and now, here in
these modern spaces
defined by “beholder’s eye”
and beauty tenuous and lost
somewhere in between
there and nowhere
we only feel the loss
of that ancient place,
that ancient ideal
equally abstract
but oh so much more real!tumblr_lwz05n924V1qflyrno1_1280The place of Beauty
in a broken, breaking world,
how to recognize it
rather than define it,
those moments that stop us
dead in our fatal tracks.

Do you know beauty
is conducive to stillness?
It isn’t that which excites
or makes us want to replicate it.

No, it simply makes us exist,
makes us be, as though this being
is our deep quest and meaning
to exist for just this moment
and always just this moment
in longing, in fulfilment
in full participation
together with the aching
the longing for another taste
the needing just another glimpse…tumblr_n6akkn7ghY1s4e9y0o1_1280another glimpse
of haunted, haunting
Beauty.
much deeper than what’s pleasant
far starker than the pretty,
the common ache of beauty!
the common wound of beauty!

It’s beauty that transforms us,
it’s beauty so divine, like God.
For God’s beauty is such a beauty
able to embrace life as well as coming death,
a beauty both heart-breakingly
entwined with our sad brokenness
and offering us something more
transforming, more ne’er broken.tumblr_nmnjt0Cfxl1qa7gx5o2_r1_1280My precious dear, draw close
and listen with your heart:

wounds are meant to heal us,
broken parts of life are not okay, no
wholeness is our stubborn longing
and a most profound brave calling.

We were made for wholeness, dear
and beauty with us, in us near
Oh Beauty, Precious Beauty.tumblr_niyqycZwvG1sorugto1_1280

Never Ending Irish Rain

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You still look cold.
You should probably
come closer
to the fire before
it burns out.

I know you don’t remember,
no, you can’t remember,
can you?
But you love this
Never Ending Irish Raintumblr_nn3cvkEnbH1sooy9go1_500pouring down so green 
and soft all cloaked around us
no matter where we are
in all of the whole earth
or time from the beginning blue…

you have jamais vu, my darling:  
not remembering something
you always see each day, but
you forget as soon as
it is out of sight,tumblr_nn2a2lpnUY1thfeewo1_1280and then you turn your head
your beautiful estrangéd face
to the other side of midnight
and behold that silky rain
(as if for the first time)

that Never Ending Irish Rain
fell green across the golden waters
and washing down those greying sands,
quiet, themselves ablaze, a-falling
like stars straight thru the night
tumblr_m8vyav6kyj1qdnleko1_1280your eyes glow with delight
your heart goes green with grace
and all time is this moment
on your estrangéd face so wet
til you forget again

this sweet and spicy curtain
this velvet mist refreshing
…this cry of your true Celtic Heart…
Never Ending Irish Rain…
your Never Ending Irish Rain
tumblr_nmnxhtV2Lj1thfeewo1_540

3 Lies We Need to Stop Telling About ‘Negative People’ — Everyday Feminism

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3 Lies We Need to Stop Telling About ‘Negative People’ — Everyday Feminism.

Very good article, and it addresses yet another binary prison.

Constance, your pursuit of happiness is not going to be actualised in the elimination of people you think of as negative…

…and this is largely because true happiness is something that has everything to do with who you are or are not, not others.  Haven’t you noticed yet that every single “rilly rilly kewl” person you meet eventually does something or says something or is something that is unpleasant or (gasp) *negative*?

And I will say this, but speak for myself alone:  I take a certain pride and joy in interacting with “Eeyore” people, and then bringing joy to them.

How in the world is anyone ever going to influence anyone anywhere for joy?

People who are toxic and will destroy you if you let them?  Okay, those people you would be wise to avoid if possible, or if not then be suited and booted around.

But people who are simply “negative” are likely reminding you of something about yourself that needs changing, and so Charissa says keep them around, and learn to grow!  Give them some grace.

Someday you’re gonna need some for yourself.

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.
Charissa

How Living With and Loving Bruce Jenner Changed My Life Forever | Linda Thompson

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How Living With and Loving Bruce Jenner Changed My Life Forever | Linda Thompson.

Umm…okay, so this was unbelievably difficult/wonderful for me to read.

Just soo relate to many things, and so impressed by this amazing woman’s compassion for Jenner.

May they both be blessed with compassionate days.

Bruce Jenner’s Special With Diane Sawyer On ABC’s 20/20 Sets New Bar For Reporting On Transgender Issues

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Constance, this is a pretty dang good analysis of the Jenner interview.

*I am calling this person Jenner for now…while Jenner has given request for male pronouns to be used for the interview and identification currently, Jenner has also unequivocally declared as female.  I remember those early days myself, and my mindset that I could/would accommodate everyone else, whom I mistakenly assumed were acting in good faith that matched my own…I was wrong to assume this, and wish now that I had just asserted myself*

*Just in case this is true for Jenner too…I will simply use Jenner’s surname until it becomes clear where on the spectrum Jenner connects in*

Bruce Jenner’s Special With Diane Sawyer On ABC’s 20/20 Sets New Bar For Reporting On Transgender Issues.

Gabriel Arana is senior media editor at The Huffington Post.

Re-Posting Nicole Mott on Bruce Jenner

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Constance, here is a post from a Facebook friend concerning Bruce Jenner.  While the opinions about Jenner as a person are hers, the concerns/facts about that vast majority of transgender people are quite real, and she so articulately expressed them.

Thanks, Nikki!  Your words RAWK!

So, Bruce Jenner.

I am so tired of hearing this person’s name. So sick and tired of it…

There’s been this stuff swirling around across what I’ve dubbed, the “Transphere” concerning idols, and all of that…what a crock…

Let me first state that being trans is NOT who you are. It is a PART of who you are like having brown eyes, or green skin (I dunno, maybe you do?). A lot of people choose to make it central to who they are as people, and that’s fine…you know what? Those people can do whatever they want to do, but it STOPS there, with them. I’m not in that box.

When someone sees me, I don’t want the light bulb to go off, “Trans.” in the same way someone else you might see triggers something else. When this happens, we surrender our person hood, in exchange for an issue. We are no longer people, but instead representatives of an issue. Try doing that, and having a meaningful existence…I dare you.

I am me. My life experience has taught me that while being trans may be a permanent part of who I am, and always was, it does NOT define me, and even if it did, that definition it yields for me is vastly different from that of another person who is trans.

When most lay people hear the term, “Transgender” they tend to think it means someone like me, for example, someone just like me.

“Oh, I knew someone who became a guy. That’s cool!”

or,

“Yeah I have a friend who became a girl, he’s still my best friend!” (Obvious gender pronoun errors, because who their friend is, and identifies as isn’t important to you, only what they mean (or meant) to you. Grats on being selfish, and inconsiderate or someone’s inherent self-worth and dignity.

In both of these examples, what’s happened is that people think that transgender means one thing, and my oh my, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I will say this now, and I seldom ever just post it on my wall, but I was diagnosed with transsexualism, and that was treated under the care of a team of doctors via gender transition everything ranging from Hormones to Surgeries. My lived experiences are absolutely NOTHING like this person’s.

My personal feelings on this “Bruce Jenner” crap comes from a place of protectiveness. I am sick of this story getting air time, and these well-to-do 1%’s feeding their lusts for attention. This isn’t a game!!! People get hurt because of the attitudes propagated by this garbage….and that is EXACTLY what this is.

My protectiveness comes from the suffering of people who are trans. The people who deal with the shit from ground zero EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. We have the highest suicide attempt rate IN THE WORLD with almost ONE in every TWO people attempting. Then you have this person creating a circus of non-sense giving Cis people and others who have no idea what Trans is, so much ammo to continue the abuses, the bullying, the murders, the legally oppressive laws for us to go about our daily lives.

I AM SICK of it.

What’s more important to mention here, and I did hit on this on a previous post on a friend’s wall, is that as a “community” there really is no “trans” community, but more of a loose grouping of people defending human rights, specifically gender identity and expression. We can not agree on anything at all concerning who or what is trans, what that means or doesn’t mean…possibly because there is no categorical way to classify the breadth and scope of the human experience.

Fact is: We are all people, and gender identity and expression, while an innate part of who we are, is not the defining characteristic of who we are…but a smaller component of a much larger entity.

Get this crap out of the media already. There’s no doubt going to be a negative impact because of it, and I can see it all over our local news station’s Facebook pages.

I do not like this person being in the news, and I think it serves to do more harm than good. Most of my posts are usually much more supportive than this, but we’ve seen too many train wrecks with public figures, and I just don’t want, nor do I care to see social attitudes decline and make life more difficult for every day people like those on my friend’s list.

I feel the same way about this, that I do when someone with Autism commits a murder, and they try to lump all people who are autistic into the murderer categories.

Bruce Jenner is NOT an idol, and needs to go away. ASAP.

/rant_over

Now, I’m going tend to my garden. Have a blessed day heart emoticon

tumblr_nmkwzyKHRl1qh41oao1_1280

“Who Are We To Judge…”

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Constance, I likely will not post an awful lot about the Jenner Transition Announcement until she gets further underway.

I totally, utterly get where she is at right now.  She is thinking things about how she is not that worried about pronouns, and how she is willing to overlook the othering and policing that is going on right now, yadda yadda yadda…she feels a responsibility to other transgender people to effect a graceful transition with dignity.

But deep down inside…all those things are hurting her, affecting her, wounding her.  She doesn’t need me adding to the cacophony of noise surrounding her (and all of that exacerbated because of the family dynamics she married into). Eventually, she will begin to find her bearings and her voice, or if she already has, she will begin to express it in her own unique ways.

But I will be commenting on things that orbit her transition, things that are revealed and illuminated as a result of her decision, and here is one of them:

On my Facebook page, a friend linked to an article about her transition.  That article is here:

Bruce Jenner’s declaration creates an opportunity

What was telling was in the comments on the Facebook post, all generally very supportive, but one stood out to me.  It simply said “Who are we to judge…”

“Who are we to judge…”

Constance, do you see why that comment jumped out at me?  Yes?  Jot down your thoughts about it…or No?  No you do not see anything odd about that comment in relation to gender identity?

Well, Cis-Constance, imagine yourself being introduced to someone, and them very kindly and sagely assessing you and then saying to you and everyone “Who are we to judge…” and then shrugging as if to say “to each their own”…

as if your gender identity is something that is up for judgement in the first place!

as if your gender identity is an article of clothing that you simply decided to wear that day.

as if your gender identity was a moral choice you made or make.

Gender orientation is put into the same classification as sexual orientation and then judged as a moral choice, and this is simply incorrect and unfair.

There is orientation that is a given…and then there are behaviors that descend from choices that we make as creatures who are moral creatures and subject to moral constraints as determined by God and current cultural climate (and those are rarely congruent, btw)…the behaviors themselves are what I choose to do…but the orientation is who I was born to be.

Orientation is not moral behavior.  It is simply the given baseline.

You as a cis-gender person are never subjected to the statement “Oh…you say you are a (fill in your biological chromosomal state).  I see.  Well, who am I to judge?”

And that, Constance, is the very epitome of cis-gender privilege!

Don’t get me wrong…I love the compassion that is at root behind the commenter’s post…but gender orientation is not a matter subject to judgement any more than race is, or that there is a brain in a skull, or that there are arms and legs on a human.

The deep underlying ignorance that is being exposed in the light of gender-education right now is the notion that gender-variance is a moral issue!  The deep presupposition fostered in our binary is that any person who is cross-gendered is by definition subject to moral assessment should they decide to authentically live out who they are in spite of the external casing they are housed in!!

Do you see this?

The commenter is correct:  we are not the judge of one another and should not judge one another.  But the issue that she applied this moral principle speaks volumes of how far we have to go yet as a culture, and why we transgender people are subject to such tremendous othering.

Even the way we are supported is often times OTHERING!

I have the same internal response when people say to me “Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy”…and they are sincerely “for” me in terms of their willingness to accept me.

But they have no idea just how deeply they sentenced me to more time in the gender penitentiary.

“Mr. & Mrs. Cis-Gender Constance:  Tear down this wall!!“2008-5-10 Auschwitz No 11 - Final 2-1-2009 750

My Stance Regarding The Past, and The Distortions That Are Clung To

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“Just because your pain is understandable, doesn’t mean your behavior is acceptable.”
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

Keep this one in your back pocket for the next time someone acts like an ass and then tells you they’ve been through a lot of stuff. Respectful and yet still firmly keeping respect for yourself.

Respect for myself…this is new to me, for I have not really ever been aware of a “self” to respect!  The self I knew was more a naught than a presence.  What I was not plus who I was not added up to me equalling naught, and thus I never respected myself.

I do now…and taking responsibility for shortcomings does not make me responsible for the distortions and poor choices of others in reaction to them.  I can joyfully embrace my opportunity to express my true remorse in not being the perfect person I desired to be and not being “the best (fill in the blank)” I could be…

…but then letting someone add cruelty to this?  Allowing them to dehumanize me, devalue me?  Diminish me?

Nah, I don’t think so…not going there anymore.  Respect for myself means that I own my behavior and let everything else go, and oddly, I think this sets other people free by placing them in accountability for their own choices in how to respond to my shortcomings and places a responsibility to respect themselves by acknowledging their own failures.

Hey, if Victor Frankl can overcome what he did, choose a proactive life in spite of those grave horrors?  So can I…and so can you.

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.
Charissa Gracetumblr_nn05mm9MLU1slipiho1_500

A Thoughtful Implication In Favor of Relationship…

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Constance, this lil essay below illustrates a similar experience that I have virtually everyday, except from the other end of the spectrum and working back.

I liked it, for it did a great job of revealing the underlying obligations that the paradigm encumbers all of us with.

Please chew on it awhile…and then think about how you can take people for who they are as the inside soul reveals, rather than how the outside accoutrements imply…one involves assumption, and one involves relationship…

“swanjolras:

okay, i have been trying to say this in a way that makes sense for ages, so here goes:

a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on internalized misogyny. and that’s definitely something we all need to look at within ourselves and address and work on.

but: a lot of hatred of dresses, pink, stereotypically “feminine” stuff is based on the fact that femininity is compulsory for people who are assigned female at birth.

like, this is a fact. this isn’t something i’m making up. femininity is compulsory. i have to wear dresses and makeup to be taken seriously when i go to job interviews, when i go to social occasions, when i present myself in any formal setting. when i don’t do that, people notice. they’re rude to me.

when i shop in the men’s section, store employees and customers glare at me! my relatives press feminine clothes on me during the holiday season because they think i should dress in a more feminine way! when i go to get my hair cut and ask for it to be cut in a certain style, the woman cutting my hair literally ignores that explicit instruction because it’s “too butch”. femininity is compulsory! i am not allowed to present my gender the way i would like to present my gender!

it’s not the fault of femininity that it’s being forced on me. and the patriarchy does devalue femininity. and the current rhetoric of “you can wear pink and skirts and still be a feminist and still be queer and it’s other people’s fault for not taking you seriously, not yours for dressing that way” is great.

but i’ve heard people say to me, “you can wear lipstick and dresses and still be a feminist” about a thousand times, and i have never, ever,ever heard someone say to me, “you can refuse to wear lipstick and dresses and you are no less of a woman than someone who does wear them.” i had to figure that out all on my own.

i’m allowed to be angry at the cis women who force me to present myself in a way that i don’t want to present myself. i am allowed to do that.

I will scream the bolded from the rooftops for you if you want. <3″

tumblr_n2nuaaMSAz1rsyaepo1_1280tumblr_nl29orRzyW1qc2tzno1_1280

Disconnected Fists

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they’re visible, don’t worry, it’s now clear.
you’ve made them known to us, you’ve brought them near.
you’ve parted the black night to show their flurry
you’ve pierced the darkness with them, they are here
in front of me, swinging in violent sphere
and they connected judgement with rank fear.

those hard bones writhe, they crawl beneath your skin,
those bones now brittle with the pain within
and become sharp-edged, cutting thru the din
with angles, planes, indictments of old sin
imagined, perceived lurking deep within
and cloaked beneath your tattooed skin so thin…

and seeing those determined self wounds glare,
those prison house tattoos inflicted…where?
haha!  where not is more the likely question!
those long years harboring the things you think
and living with that historical stink
to birth your athenaeum of hot ink.

I see them hanging, disconnected fists
I see the ritual mutilating notes
written on you, canvas once so soft
and now a record of your fists aloft
and shaking clenched, like Charon’s fated boats
attempting to defeat the smothering mists…

I beg you…let your hands let go of you
and let the ink run backwards up your arms
and let forgiveness work her healing charms
and let your face be wet with grace’s dew
whatever…regardless, I love you
Image 003

Patience is a virtue…and so is Grace

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“I don’t chase people anymore. I learned that I’m here, and I’m important. I’m not going to run after people to prove that I matter.”

That’s me…Grace.  Charissa Grace, and I did my best and better than most.  If you twist that, you would twist anything and thus I am free of your ravings.  I am sad that they are your crooning seducers.  I am sad they deny us the honor of growing thru difficulty because they distort normal brokenness and a lot of really great things into melodramatic horrors that never happened.

But I am not grovelling any more.  Slur me as you will.  I am still me, the same one who was faithful to the utmost to stay alive in the face of gut wrenching horror.

I matter.tumblr_n1l2fsmtwp1r28mvbo1_1280

If You Are A New Reader…

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…I want to invite you to look back thru the months to dip into prior posts.  There is a plethora of plenty there!  Poetry, posts about a wide range of the issues faced in life that are poignantly illustrated by gender orientation, theological musings and spiritual experiences recounted.

You can discover who “Constance” is…and you are invited to join her if you wish.

You can definitely see growth and development in me, as I live and breathe in transition from a not-out but self-aware very dysphoric transgender woman who is perceived as a white male of power, position, and privilege to a more congruent and out transgender woman who is now regularly othered, policed, and yes occasionally even perceived as who I actually am and received in joy.

You will see the journey of nearly every transgender person who endures the loss of so many things, so many people, in the desperate quest to gain themselves.  You will witness how this quest is defined by the defenders of the paradigm as selfish and self-centered…when it is far more about finding a fort of safety from suicidal ideation and death.

But above all…hopefully…you will find a person who is making the transition that every single human being must find a way to make:  that transition from death to life…from works to grace…from self-centered ego-oriented pursuits to other-oriented sacrificial service.

And maybe, just maybe?  That life motto of mine can at the end of it all be found true:

Yielded Vessel Yielding Blessingtumblr_nlflo6rI7y1rrvadyo1_1280

Do Justice.  Love Mercy.  Walk Humbly.
Much Love, 
Charissa Grace

PS:  The best way to investigate the archives of Grace Notes is to use the calendar at the bottom of the blog page…or utilize the search function in the right hand margin.

Tears of Violet Flow

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Tonite the rain
seeps from the sky
in windy swells
and shower sighs,
oozing sideways
thru the grey
and slowly
watering this day
and watering me,
here, watching.tumblr_n3twukp8la1txnrn6o1_1280you, sitting there,
on that strange bus
going…where?
Oh why’d you ride
that carriage dark,
Ah, why’d you treat
it like a lark
to ride that sterile
Mystery Train
of darkling Truth,
forgetting lessons
learned in youth…
and me, stood there,
near, watching?tumblr_nn0ix69kSK1qat5pio1_1280Your brother ran
that show, so full
of twisted fairy
tales for fools
who should know better,
don’t know worse
so they make sow’s ears
from silk purse,
intricate, smoke,
his modern show
of life and leisure,
ending bound up
in truth-mal-seizure
and me, in agony,
there,
watching.2008-5-10 Auschwitz No 2 - Final 6-24-2008 750But then you turned,
you saw me there
and your face crumpled
as you stared,
and understanding
bum-rushed you
and carried you
from Timbuktu
into the truth
of you and me
and what our hearts
had knit together,
free and flesh
of flesh, and bone
of bone, you saw
me, stood,
there crying.tumblr_n9g7cv6wQk1r2tfp0o1_1280and then your face
turned inside out
and I saw your heart
all heliotrope
and bloodstone it
did drain back towards
the skies and then
it pushed out of
your eyes, and violet
tears ran down
your cheeks as your soul
broke in both
our grief while I was
there,
there, waiting.tumblr_n4zmziYZZM1rue7wuo1_1280And you ran fast
towards the door
and it did open
then, what’s more
you knelt and fell
down to your knees
and wept so bitter
in your lees
and I ran to you,
there, crying.tumblr_nmm2173GmL1r3t8ico1_1280and you on that step,
wracked with sobbing
to beat the band
and me on that
hot pavement sharp
and biting, crying
harmonic to
you sighing, and
your face covered
in tears of violet
flow somewhere
between red, blue,
purple, and grey,
like your eyes,
of velvet, violet
grey…

and then I woke
before we could speak
the words our hearts
broke to say
and never cease to say

and you were gone
midst tears…
midst tears of violet flow
and me left,
there, cryingtumblr_nmqb8alChS1trfg04o1_540

A Stern but Necessary Critique of Carlos Flores’ “Stern but Necessary Critique.”

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I decry the use of the word “transgenderism” as an unthinking usage that grants entrance into othering trans-humans at best and actually slurs and polices us at worst…and having disclaimed that:

Constance…PLEASE hurry over and read this article! It is a powerful examination of the issue of gender orientation.

One of the things I like about it is that it highlights how the intersex condition of so many human beings by definition illustrates that the location of gender orientation is NOT in the presence or absence of any body part! Because why? Because lots of intersex people have both sets of body parts present, and yet identify themselves still as male or female!

This observation is a basic one, and is not exclusive of others who identify even more fluidly, but they illustrate the point as well: awareness of the incredibly complex and intricate issue of gender orientation is growing, is expanding, and as with so many things in history, is changing as our medical technology has the ability to reveal the previously hidden realities of humanity, who is fearfully and wonderfully made!

You might find yourself very comfortable with Flores’ simplistic and presumptive thinking…until you finish the article, and if your mind is even a bit open, you will have much to chew on.

Constance, I know you to be open minded, thoughtful, and committed to understanding, so I am confident you will be enriched by the experience…Reader? You? Well, you still show up here, don’t you? For whatever reason, you are still making tracks to Grace Notes! So buckle up, take your courage in hand! Mindsets are far more elastic than you previously knew, and God is far bigger than the box you built for Them! You too…press into this article, and let the truth continue to set you free!

Much love and bountiful Grace be unto you,
Charissa

Nothing Rhymes Orange

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i’m befuddled as jokes,
while i sit here and stare,
at the ordered brush strokes
that are hung there, mid-air

translucent and shimm’rey
in a gloaming lost day
i have witnessed the fading
of the old beauty way

while the efforts of many
seek orange everlasting
orange for my heart,
bits of white lay contrasting

and the nuance is gone,
disappeared in the mist
along with soft kisses,
it’s all been dismissed

by orange fading soft
into white then returning
to orange, and orange
and then just more orange

so i sit here, i wait,
i remember another time,
other days full of
sweet music and rhyme

before it was orange,
with some white thrown in there
cus nothing rhymes orange
it just hangs in the air.

“Chill”…and I concede, gladly!!

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“Chill has now slithered into our romantic lives & forced those among us who would like to exchange feelings & accountability to compete in the Blasé Olympics with whomever we are dating. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean whomever we’re ‘hanging out with.’  Whomever we’re ‘talking to.’
     “Chill asks us to remove the language of courtship and desire lest we appear invested somehow in other human beings. To even acknowledge that there might be an emotional dimension to talking or dating or hanging out or coming over or fucking or whatever the kids are calling it all these days feels forbidden.
     “It is a game of chicken where the first person to confess their frustration or confusion loses.”
— “Against Chill” by Alana Massey

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Honesty, and the honest truth

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When someone says “I’m just being honest” what they almost always mean is “I am choosing to put myself before you, my feelings before you, my comfort over yours…and then make it all okay with the tattoo across your forehead of ‘honesty'”.

Honesty is the sincere grappling with what is right, cleanest, highest and best in any given situation, and honesty without tact is simple aggravated assault of the soul…

It is the overall good that is the most honest thing, orientation, goal.

And you darn well better make sure that you have standing with a person, deep deposits of presence and consistent serving before you make a raid on the account in the name of “just being…”a_broken_heart_by_SoViolentSomacabre

Today I Bend My Heart

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Mama today I bend my heart
to yield before Your love
I bow my conscious self to you
and give You all I am.

And all that I don’t know?
That too, in deep and darkened nooks,
in pits and crevices and cracks
in each unopened book…

I am Yours, Holy Mama,
Spirit of God so Clean,
Spirit of Wisdom, Comforter,
Giver of Peace Serene

And a lil mirror clear
I long to become
so here I am, my Mama dear
for You my heart does thrum!

Yes…Men as a whole are privileged and need a reality check!

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Constance, I post about men, their sense of privilege and entitlement, the mutilation of their soul they are forced to ritually endure as payment for that privilege, and the twisted and scary ways that sense of entitlement and the actual rape of their souls replicates itself in their actions…

…and I often get messages back that are variations on the “not all men” theme…cus these individuals have not taken the actual physical actions that I post about…even though they disregard their own violent and presumptuous writing style that is arrogant, presumptive, and ultimately such a perfect manifestation of the very thing I write about…

Well I am posting this below as illustration of a general thing by virtue of highlighting a specific.

And remember, men:  I grew up in your midst!  I was there, me Charissa Grace…watching, listening, horrified and traumatized when I was naive and new…and then tired and tearful when I was older and on verse 3, 214 of the same tired-ass old song that you each and everyone think is one you wrote…YOU wrote, and thus your every word is so important, so heavy with weight…and if only people listened to YOUR way of explaining it they would finally understand…

um no.  What is listed below?  It is the unvarnished, unsophisticated version of what the vast vast VAST majority of you do over and over and over again…such  as the nice guy I read yesterday who was mansplaining all about how women would not be effective leaders when they were on their periods because their hormones would make them irrational, or less rational…

which omfg ignores sooo many things, assumes sooo many things…and one major thing is that rationality is any better compass for providing leadership than other things like say intuition, or heart, or feeling, or compassion, or…or…or…or…and then assumes that women ARE more irrational than men…what the actual F**K?

Rational?  Like the poor person below…

um, no.bird beek

 

PS:  all comments below are from the original post, not me

 

canfy:

onefitmodel:

fformlessness:

genuinely the scariest person i’ve ever come across!!!! the first message was one from where he messaged me yesterday
the last message exchange was from another girl who posted her interaction with him, and after her message back to him after he VIDEO CALLED HER MULTIPLE TIMES IN A ROW he proceeded to tell her to “shut the fuck up, whore” when she explained how weird it was

i’m now blocked from his fb and i’m just sharing this in case any girl ever gets a friend request from him!! i have no idea what state he’s from and i can’t access his page anymore so please be careful ily!!!

OH MY GOD

Okay somebody please report that shit to the police he genuinely sounds like the kind of guy whod shoot women in a university. Like srsly people living in the us do something about it

EVERYONE, CONTACT HIS PARENTS, CONTACT THE POLICE, CONTACT FACEBOOK SUPPORT!!! Don’t let this asshole get away with it!!!

this lil artichoke

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gawd, that sharp glinty knife
coming at me quick (again)

that edge, sliding softly and then
slipping in past that tender push back

and then into me, and the skin splits
and the layers melt side-side

like butter giving way easy and quick
before that silver edge honed true.

and the top of me falls away
and there below gapes the rest of me

me, of the rest, prickly and pokey
and all artichokey…and another stroke

of the blade downward-sweeping
and turning, graceful curving

to scrape my sides and scour them
of all those chokes, every mis-spoke…

and then into hot water, steamy
scourging, softening, sweetening…

and edible at last…
a tender Heart-not-choked

this lil artichoke1399362_10151775891144786_2057318616_o

A Lesson I Failed Spectacularly To Bequeath

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“One thing I can be, if nothing else, is decently kind and understanding. Everything else can go, but that doesn’t have to.”
— Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

tumblr_n3pxthOdc01s0a0voo1_1280

Unmoored In Deeps

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Here…these waters.
How did I end up here?
Off-shore, un-moored
and docks all far away
behind me in the mists
above me in the air
above the waters
I traverse?

And guppies become barracudas
goldfish become sharks,
how did that happen?
Something in the water?
Something that doesn’t belong?
I guess that would be me,
heavy metals and radioactives
tainting all I touch.

I was always chained to edges,
I was always tossed by tides,
back and forth
up the beach
and down to seas relentless,
in the running of the tides of time,
in the running from the tides of time.

But now I swim unmoored
in unfamiliar deeps
surrounded by voracious
cruel cold creatures sleek
and fit for fit survival
by merciless sharp teeth
and furious assaults
of shredding ruthless words

and I’ve no idea whatsoever
how leaving the docks
marooned me here unmoored in deeps
surrounded by cold sharks

**yes, I am cognizant of the litanies writ, spoke, imagined, nursed and harbored…I know the recitations red and rough, I have my own remembrance, written in blood and sweat and tears, and silent visits in the night to sweetly sleeping angels soft, and exhalations beautiful and smelling so of life…and hair, scented like bread fresh from some heavenly oven and broken for me and put in hair…pulling me thru the valley of death…

…and discovering that my grateful declarations were in fact resented and received as guilt trips laid, it crushes me to my core…and something is defeated there, something there has died, in my core…

this is the unmooring of which I speak, the unknowing in which I am marooned…

and worst of all is the finding of complete strangers in places I knew every inch and wrinkle, and it is this that unnerves the deepest, for now every word spoken, every question asked, every thing created, I have no idea if what I think about it is real, is actually real…my truth meter pegs and then it seems all others call that up “down”, that north “south”…

…and I send up SOS flares, ask trusted hearts to read and to consider offerings of soul and heart, attempts to understand…and silence towers, and life looms and busy threatens…

that is what this poem is about.  Swimming in strange waters in a strange land with strange sights and fearful creatures so hungry for my blood and so uncaring of the carcass left behind and so disinterested in the living heart that fiercely cries out “we are here we are here”, hoping Horton is out there, somewhere, a faithful elephant who never forgets…

Long ago the Psalmist asked “Whom have I but You?  Though the mountains fall into the sea, though the colored dawns turn to shades of grey, I am learning to see the beauty of the greys and the glories of the canyons whose majesty is manifested in the things that were removed…

I do have Father, and I do have my Good Shepherd and Great High Priest who passed thru the heavens themselves and not a veil of cloth and skins…and I do have Great Holy Spirit, whom my heart cries to again and again “Mama”, She of wisdom and tender mercy, She who was there at the Lord’s beginnings, She by whom all was made that the Lord made…

…I have Them, and being unmoored with Them is like taking my homeland with me regardless of where I roam**

Those Webbed Feet

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You’ve shown up…well, your true colors have
in wild-thrash-hurled, paint-vile-ent words,
sword-tongue-rash-cut strokes pretend to be brushes,
on this present canvas fouled in yesterday’s deathstyle…
fevers, phantoms, ghosts (the spectacles on your nose)
distorting memory, warping past-tents days
with present-tense poison wounds.

And you!  Pretender!

Tragic-noble-hero-little-guy,
you sit on that shipwreck with hemlock twig narratives illusory
and call them olive branches, story-straighteners, record-revealers!

You almost had me,
until I noticed those web feet and knew
you were just a garbage scow gull and not
the promised dove of rest, release, redemption.

Your raucous cries rapacious echo wildly,
and you wheel and spin so hungry and flap so furious
over those bones there, that ship run aground at last
and you eager to get at that dead garbage and feed,
you so careful to sing when doves cry (you imagine)
but just managing a greedy gull’s squawk (or parrot).

I am over here…floating…under this graceful sail
full of fresh wind, faint, feathery, but substantial
(at last, transubstantiated and become living flesh),
and I see them…those webbed feet, those clay feet
dirty with aggression, aggrandizement, anguish…

and I wish I could fall at them,
those webbed feet, sobbing, and wash them
with my tears and dry them with my hair.