…it’s why I do talk about things…
“There are two reasons why people don’t talk about things; either it doesn’t mean anything to them, or it means everything”
— Luna Adriana
Category Archives: Charissa Grace
A Bird’s Free Flight and Flower Feet
i am a flower planted deep,
my soul a bird loose in deep skies
i should be free to soar and spin
but i am caught by roots in dirt
my body coarse in clumsy lurch
yearning for freedom’s feathered perch
i am a bird that cannot land
with soul that longs for roots at rest
i should be buried safe in soil
burrowing warm in dark rich nest
but i’ve no harbour, no still rest
no pillow for my aching breast
a flower trapped within a bird
a bird caged in a fragile flower
and God above my prison bower
may hear me in my darkened hour
On Being Friends With Jesus
As I sat in the hard wooden pew, enjoying its solid familiarity and reassuring simplicity, I listened to the preacher talk about the swirl of events that ran unchecked during the last several days before Jesus met death face to face on the backside of the Cross.
I heard him tell of Jesus warning everyone around Him that He was going to the place of the skull, to get a death-grip on suffering and never let go, and then to eat it…all. I heard him tell of how Jesus warned that anyone who wanted to be His friend had to come with Him, had to see, had to get a belly-ache too…
…and I was off in my thoughts, back, back back to those days and I heard the sounds of cattle and crowds, tasted heat and dust and slid sideways through the slant orange light from a beating throbbing insistent sun.
I was in the house of Martha, her sister Mary, and Lazarus their sickly brother, and Mama was telling me that these were the very best friends of Jesus.
They had chosen Him…they liked Him…as a person. His humor and tenderness, His wrestle with being called a bastard His entire life when He was more True-Son than any of us, back then anyway. Now? Well the Adoption Agency is open for business…but that story is presaged by this one…this story of what it was like being friends with Jesus.
Jesus always was about another story, in everything He did. Each encounter, each miracle, each glance was full of metaphor and creative import, was a beam or a brick in this House that He began then and is still working on even now.
So He is befriended by these…perhaps parents long lost to death and tragedy…and He has decided that it will be His closest friends that He will entrust His priceless gift to: the understanding of Resurrection.
You realize, don’t you, that understanding a thing means knowing its front and its back, and it by definition means knowing what that thing is not. So let’s recall what happened to these, the best friends of the Shepherd.
One of them becomes very sick…Lazarus…who was never that strong anyway. He had to live with his sisters, one of whom was of a strength so as to make Patton seem like Gomer Pyle, and one of whom was gifted with such sight as to make Joan of Arc seem like Helen Keller.
Formidable…and in that patriarchy, a sick and weak man who had to be cared for by his sisters was held in contempt and thought to be of no consequence…except to Jesus. To Him, this family was the one that would together take that voyage across the river Styx…and back again.
The sisters immediately send word. Martha marshals forces and gets the message to Jesus faster than the telegraph that would come along centuries later…and Mary sends word thru the heart currents which brought the knowing immediately to Jesus and added such sorrow to His already increasingly agonizing heart.
And Jesus, knowing the Father was doing a work of instruction, answered to everyone in earshot that they would tarry where they were. Which shocked everyone, for it was well known that Jesus had a deep affection for the weak and unadmirable Lazarus (which of course made them all even more leery of this odd carpenter!), and everyone figured He would fold space and high tail it up to Bethany to heal His friend.
But He waited.
And everyone wondered if there had been a falling out…in fact Martha was certain that Jesus was angry with her…and Mary was certain that Jesus was disappointed in her…and Lazarus, well, he felt like Jesus’ companionship was good while it lasted but was too good to be true.
But inside Himself, Jesus ached for His Beloved True Friends. Because He was going to use them to make a bigger point…and it was going to break their Hearts…so they could be healed even stronger.
One day passed by, and He waited (foreshadowing another dark day coming).
The next day came and went (and the second day was prophesied of then).
And on the third day, the sun rose and dawn fell flat on her face in the silent still absurdity of an absent best friend (just to be sure that the coming 3rd day would stand in stark contrast).
Oh there was still hubbub and the frothy surface dwellers all held out hope like icing called dinner…but Jesus was not having any of that either!
“Lazarus is dead.” He said this…flatly, tonelessly. Expressionless…like the voice of the grave itself.
And then He started His journey to their house…to face them. To face their agony, their confusion. To face their betrayal and let down. To face the accusations hidden in their bewilderment about His absence.
Constance…I refer you to John 11 when you are done reading this post, for there are a few things He said that are vertical things that stretch from the bottom of beneath eternity to the top of the beyond eternity. They are worth contemplating for a year or two…but stay with me here…
…because to everyone else around Him it just sounded like Wwah Wwah Wwah and Yadda Yadda Yadda…even to Himself, His human ears, it sounded thus.
He spoke in faith.
And then He had to face Martha Patton…and then Mary Arc…and Mary said to Him, with my voice, your voice, the voice of Rachael in Rama… “Lord, where were You?”.
And He wept. Bitterly. Deeply.
Why? Because His lesson was manifest now…on the fourth day since Lazarus had died…one more day than The Third Day…and the very first day beyond that Third Day which was the first day of a forever separation from their beloved brother for His surviving besties Martha and Mary.
And then He called Lazarus forward from death, back across the river, back to the land of the living and the loving arms of his sisters…and his True Friend as well.
All around Him, people marvelled, rejoiced, and then wept in relief and reunion and resurrection.
But Jesus? He still wept in sorrow, for He knew the full weight of the pain He had knowingly inflicted on His best friends…He knew the looming agony that was fast falling towards Him, and He knew that He had no shield against it, no weapon to fight it with, only faith in His Father for Whom He had embraced this Mission Impossible, and that promise that Father would bring everything out of death with this Obedient Son.
Jesus wept because He knows that He does His friends dirty because He can trust them to see it thru to the end, past Friday and into Sunday. It hurts Him that it hurts them…it hurts Him that He does it anyway because it is the Ultimate Good and overarching Impartation of Eternity…thru broken hearts and broken spirits.
I came back to myself, and the sermon was drawing to a close. I had a fresh perspective on my life, my agonies, and the lessons that have been shown forth.
I think I am going to continue, seeking to be a friend of God. Because everyone has sorrow and trial, everyone goes thru meaningless suffering and horror…but it seems the friends of God get to have the Presence of God with them midst the fires of pain’s crucible, and the Kingdom is birthed.
Much Love,
Charissa…an aspiring Bestie of God
Haters Gonna Hate…Dust From My Feet
Suicide Bonfire: A Deconstruction
Constance, the reaction to my latest poem has been such that I want to provide a few bits of the peek under the blanket for you. It seems that there is this very conflicted feeling as readers take it in, and it adds confusion and a sense of settled peace all at once.
Ordinarily, I would be overjoyed with this, as it is from this maelstrom that the reader’s own inner conflicts begin to be confronted, engaged, and eventually dealt with.
But this one used a word that is highly charged emotionally and fraught with fear.
I know I fear(ed) the word: suicide.
So let me lay out a few things.
1. Consider the presence throughout the entire poem of words, phrases and turns of phrase onto their ear that are stripped straight from our National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner. Ask yourself why would the poetess lace those phrases into a poem such as this? What is it she would mean by applying them in this context.
2. There is a contrast of paths and trails, their source of origin, foot traffic. All of these things are highly metaphorical and stacked vertically with fatness.
3. The poem speaks of departures, and arrivals too. It speaks of things repudiated and things embraced. It contrasts death and beauty. Consider this juxtapositioning of things, and go ahead and assume that the poetess is intentional in this placement. This will enable you, should you wish, to delve into the deeper layers of the poem, the more vital layers of meaning that all the rest is mise en place for.
4. Lastly (though by no means exhaustively), regard the title: is there more than one way to read that title, especially in light of the last stanza, imagery of a mythological creature that is not named (intentionally), double entendres and double backs, side by side realities and states (wait: a transgender person would write of 2 existential realities simultaneously experienced and the death of one of them? wooaaaa…).
5. Reassurance: those of you who jumped to the conclusion that this poem was an alarm that Charissa is going to kill herself are so appreciated by me, and also so dancing on the surface of the poem in alarm. Read thru the last couple months of posts, including “The 5 Nevers” and other similar things…and then read the poem again. This time chew it and consider it.
I think you might find it reassuring and empowering, evidence that the door has and is closing entirely on a long and arduous chapter in the tale of my life, and the beginning of a new one…say, the ending of “Charissa Crosses the Desert” and the beginning of “Charissa Sets Sail At Last”.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your concern. I won’t lie: the flame is hot, and persistent, and those haunts are frightening and sinsiter/seductive…but I see their teeth and empty eyes, and I send them away with my incantations…such as Suicide Bonfire.
Those Who Remember
“Those who love you
are not fooled by mistakes you have made
or dark images you hold about yourself.
They remember your beauty when you feel ugly;
your wholeness when you are broken;
your innocence when you feel guilty;
and your purpose when you are confused.”
— Alan Cohen
Depression in Transgender Youth Eases with Recognition, Treatment | Psych Central News
Depression in Transgender Youth Eases with Recognition, Treatment | Psych Central News.
“But Charissa…isn’t this all in your mind??? Cus demons and stuff??”
A young man has recently befriended me. He accompanied me out one day, all day…he later reported that he had never been so uncomfortable as he was when he was watching the way that other people stared at me, looked at me…the reactions of disgust, fear, slack-jawed amazement, or derision. He was flabbergasted that they would be that way…because he knows me. We have spent hours talking, and he has had the “benefit” of my counsel regarding his relationships with women. So he knows me to be an astute observer of human nature, a tender hearted intuitive listener, a gentle teller of truth that is at times somewhat hard to swallow, and above all a valuer of his life which is of priceless significance.
So when he saw them looking at me…like that…he knew for real that it was not “all in your mind, Charissa”.
The link is a good read. Please head over and acquaint yourself with the dynamics of how (surprise!) getting help to someone helps them.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Post 1400, Charissa Repents of Perfectionism
Blind Guides:
You’re so appalled at what my body is becoming you miss the becoming of my soul.
How unbecoming…how blind.
Addressed To Everyone Who Knew Me Then:
Dear Constance, Dear Reader:
I make a distinction between you Constance, who found your way here, drawn by my writings…poems, posts, pics…perhaps bloviating, who knows…but you found your way here to me, Charissa. And you have known my heart, known me for who I am, what I am…
…and then there is you, Reader. You are from my past. You knew me “then”. You knew the role I was in, the part I played, and played even to myself in the midst of the horror and sorrow dysphoria is. You watched me from afar. You assessed always, judged by what you saw on the outside.
More often than not you threw me into your scale of judgment with me on one side and yourself on the other and I was found wanting in the balance.
And then there is “Brother of Reader, Sister of Reader”…and you also are from my past. You come around like people from a small midwestern town go to the travelling freak show: you slink in under cover of darkness and read. You gossip to one another in hushed tones, and wag your head in wonder over this person you knew “who finally lost it”.
Well Reader, I did indeed finally lose it, and found me.
But here is the deal: you broke trust with me…the person. You broke faith.
I extended kindness over and over again. I extended love and sacrifice. I placed your needs above my own, and sought to serve you, give to you freely and without expectation and in hope that you would learn and be transformed by the renewing of your minds and hearts in the washings of the eternal word I sought to live.
I cannot allow you to be around. Broken trust is too deep a gulf, too broad a breach. And there are also factors that literally prohibit me from taking any chances with anyone from my past…from that specific past that involved your access to my life, and even deeper, to my heart.
So now I am gone…and the reality of my absence is sinking in…and you miss that steady striving earnest heart. You miss that gentle person you could yell at or off load on who kept cool under fire and didn’t repay evil with evil, but evil with good. You think to yourself that maybe there was a different narrative than the one you conspired with in the moment because if felt good and was safer to you than the risk of allying with someone who was going down, and going down for good…
…so you come here, reading, finding the same heart and soul, and more…realizing there were depths and chambers hidden from which treasure came, from which pearls came. You hope to find expiation. You imagine that perhaps the traces can be picked up once again and we can pick up where we left off…except that “we” didn’t leave off…
You did. Leave. Off.
Let the word be spread: I cannot risk you in my life. I will block you as I find out your presence in the various social media I utilize. Oh don’t get me wrong…I forgive you, and have forgiven from the beginning…I just cannot control what happened to the land when that nuclear bomb went off and radiation blighted that territory. Half-lives simply must pass and in the meantime nothing will grow.
So spread the word. I am not responding. I am not waving. I am not answering. I am not hating. I am not loving. I am not acknowledging. I have shaken the dust off my feet and moved on, and will never utter another word in your direction…because I am required to, I have to, I must.
I am dead to you…and alive to me, and to Constance. I am legally transitioned to me, and fully so…the me I always was and almost lost.
I am Charissa Grace…I am beloved of God, by Their Word and Their Blood…I am not yours.
All That Can Be Burned…
“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”
– Hazrat Inayat Khan
For Three Things…
“For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to—a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
— Helen Keller
This! But I Keep Forgetting!!
On Level Ground, too, for taking two
“It always takes two. For relationships to work, for them to break apart, for them to be fixed.”
| — | Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter |
On Loving One’s Self
Ya know how people say that before you can really be loved you have to love yourself?
Um, yeah no. No. I think this is one of those things that sorta sounds right, but is insidiously, horribly imprisoning. Loving yourself is hard, freaking hard. And I am not talking about selfishness or narcissism, both of which are symptoms of self-loathing. I mean genuine unconditional positive regard for self.
I will confess here: I don’t love myself. That is the truth. I am taking steps in the right direction to walk in unconditional positive regard for myself. But mostly no. I am told I am worthy of love and respect, and I find within myself the desire to be loved, but far too often I find no sense in this notion that I am worthy of anything.
And then, my heart hearkens, back back…back to these words in 1 John: “we love, because He first Loved”…it is an axiom, found in the Bible and it gives an axiomatic accounting for love, where it came from and why we all want it, and do it too.
I do know that They love me. They have shown this to me in many specific individual ways, as well as the universal ways we all are shown love (such as beautiful sunsets, the smell of baby’s breath, the sound of the wind in fir trees, the taste of exquisite food, the sweet sorrow of parting with a well-loved friend that you will see again)…and I am working on loving myself…learning how to abandon those who are abandoners.
But I ain’t there yet…and that’s okay
Why “What Would Jesus Do?” Isn’t Exactly the Right Question
To put it another way, I don’t think we’re called to imitate Jesus, but I do think we’re called to follow Jesus. There’s a subtle difference. Following Jesus implies an ongoing relationship, not merely imitating a really good guy who lived and died 2,000 years ago. Following Jesus implies that we might end up somewhere new doing things that are new—things that aren’t reflected in scripture because we inhabit a very different world than Jesus did. Even if we believe that Jesus was fully God, that doesn’t mean that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection tell us all there is to know about God. God is still working, God exists beyond the limits of history (even Jesus’s history as a man), and God promises to do a new thing within us.
Following Jesus implies forward movement, striving for a destination, which we might call “the kingdom,” as Jesus did. And as you know if you’ve ever taken a leisurely Sunday road trip or cross-country adventure or European rail journey, there is far more than one way to travel to get to the same destination.
via Why “What Would Jesus Do?” Isn’t Exactly the Right Question.
Suicide Bonfire
By the dawn’s early light
I see the faint track of passing deer
o’ershadowed by padding soft cougar prints,
and I leave behind what I so proudly hailed,
my back to that last twilight gleaming, my last one
I shall endure, or ever see.
I have conceded the fight fraught with perils
and I have left the path, to follow the trail,
the last trail, flag finally furled forever,
victim of futility and vain imagination.
I think it’s better this way, following the trail
of animals, far off the beaten human track
because that way I will not be found
or ever tracked out, and the last horror
will not be me blasted or bloated or slashed or purple
it will be a simple, puzzling absence.
The morning is blazing, gleams of blue and grey,
the air crisper and cleaner than a gunshot crack
and the beauty rolls from ridge to ridge
and my eyes fill and smudge a smidge
in sorrow and relief.
I’ll never see you again, but that is not a thing
cus hey, I haven’t seen you thru the night
and have no proof you’re even still there,
I don’t even know if I’m still here, truth be told.
The going gets tougher, the trail drops away
and I am bushwhacking thru thick thorny
fierce frolics of Scotch Broom and poison oak.
I won’t be allergic, where I am going.
Finally I find the deep copse dark,
slick with shadows, layers laid lifeless
and freshly dead in morning, and I walk to
the deeps of the bowl and hunker.
Down. Down. Birds dart overhead in sound and glimpse.
Down. Down. And spacious skies descend to gulp.
Down. Down. And ancient hills crouch low and dusty.
and me, in the hollow, growing thin, bleeding out, feeding grasses
copper and salt, tears and surrender, and sorrow on the wind.
Time will pass and my flesh becomes the dust from whence it came
and my bones will still delay, waiting for a spark, waiting for
the Flint of God to strike them, tender tinder with me finally
gone in ghostly ever-swoon,
and there they ever burn, in the night, in memory
of all that we endured, and all we were denied
and all I hope to spare you from
with this bonfire, this bonefire
releasing me in conflagrating furies
in flight to the stars above
and this tragedy stupid, mute, dumb
finally finished.
Haiku for Spring
Cherry Blossom Me
pinched between mountain and stream
and sky…then I’m gone
Mama I Need…
a word, just a wet sweet word
from Your lips Ruby and Red
with Redemption and Resurrection.
Mama I need
a touch, just a finger
upon my brow so thick,
so unfine and bony and ugly.
Mama I need
to hear You, near and dripping
in comfort and tender compassion
Mama, I need
to know if it even
matters or moves
anywhere that makes
a true lasting difference
Mama I need
a poem of purity
a verse that is pretty
a body that’s fit
and a being acceptable
I Am Overcome In Black
In great resistant insistent being
I came forth, losing everything
I thought was me and part of me
but was just chrysalis.
Quills from eternity, beyond here
pierce thru light and hope
and pierce thru me until
they touch me, mark me intricate.
I see the patterns of exquisite pain and mercy
I see the tracks of becoming’s travail
but it keeps on going, that black claiming
until everything is clothed in its homogenous grip.
and I am overcome in black
and without voice, without strength
without cheek or jowl beside mine
alone in the black and caught between stars
Life Between…
This is what life is like, between the relief and joy of transition, and the persistent existential state of dysphoria…
Posting this as is: Language Alert
Constance, this is being posted as is…it was a question posed on a forum I read…well, actually, it was a statement disguised as a question. Don’t you just love when people do that? Instead of asking what you think, they tell you what they think but since they don’t have the courage to say that to you, they “rouge it up” all sweet and kind in the form of a question.
While the answer is spoken in harshed language than I would utilize, I completely agree with the answer.
Q: Possible confusion
Do you think that it’s possible that everyone involved with gender identity furthers the confusion by focusing on labels? There are valid instances of people being less than admirable about pronouns and names but generalising about something like this could spite someone with sympathy for the cause. (I’m not saying you do these things because I don’t know you and thus wouldn’t have a position of authority to say something like that, I just want a different perspective on things)A: I think labels are only not necessary to people who haven’t had to fight for their labels before. When you get assigned to be the average label and you agree with it, there are tons of examples of your label everywhere. You get examples of how others act so when you grow you can emulate behavior, you can ask questions about your labels without fear of prejudice or hate, you get to practice and live out the examples of your labels without fear of being hurt.
I had to fight, tooth and god damn nail, to get my label. Being trans is something I’ve been beaten over, lost jobs over, lost friends over, and lost huge parts of my family.
And for the record, if you see everything going on to trans people, if you see the undeserved hatred and the murder rates and the homelessness rates and the suicide rates and the abuse and the genuine fucking torture trans kids go through, and you STILL need to be convinced to be sympathetic, you are a horrible human being and we don’t need your sympathy.
“Hawmingway” Strikes Again
I have never liked Hemingway…and I wasn’t sure why for the longest time. I think I found his machismo distasteful, I think I found his writing blunt and club like, fitting together like a log cabin’s walls…
…but there was something more that I could never put my finger on. But I think I have it now…
I think he was a coward. And I am a lot of things, and riddled with fear at nearly all times, usually free-floating fear of an undefinable nature, but I am not a coward. I press forward, face fear, and keep on chooglin’…
…especially with people.
Grace Notes is me…letting you see…me, telling. Everything, with details discreetly hidden or disguised, or misdirected. But I will not be halted or stymied in my longing to know and be known, and so I will keep finding faith and courage.
To tell.
“Never, never tell them. Try and remember that. Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.”
Except that we Rise! For Someone…we fall for ourselves!
“I was pretty sure that’s how you know you’re falling for someone—when you want the good and bad, when you want everything, regardless of how horrible, how dark. You want it all, because at the end of the day, it’s still them.”
| — | Rachel Van Dyken, Shame |
Breath. Taken Away. Resolved!
“You ruin your life by desensitizing yourself. We are all afraid to say too much, to feel too deeply, to let people know what they mean to us. Caring is not synonymous with crazy. Expressing to someone how special they are to you will make you vulnerable. There is no denying that.
“However, that is nothing to be ashamed of. There is something breathtakingly beautiful in the moments of smaller magic that occur when you strip down and are honest with those who are important to you. Let that girl know that she inspires you. Tell your mother you love her in front of your friends. Express, express, express. Open yourself up, do not harden yourself to the world, and be bold in who, and how, you love. There is courage in that.”
| — | Biance Sparacino (How To Ruin Your Life Without Even Noticing That You Are) |
Abandonment
You, long my nemesis and hater of my soul.
You’ve chilled my days and frozen all my long night’s coal
in hours of stark terror and silent desperate screams
on razor blades I’ve laid my stricken threatened head
thanks to your dark malevolent deadly ways…
abandonment.
You poisoner of my rivers flowing pure and oh so sweet,
you making dry my innocent new merry bubbling spring
and striking terror in my tender childlike heart
with zombie screams so savage, oh so hungry shrill,
and yet so silent and so baleful still
you emanate such evil dread and blackness toward me
and I am melted in my soul aghast,
abandoned.
Long have I searched and sought an exit, for the way
that leads me from your cruel torture chambers dark
un-swaddles me from all your reeking death clothes stark
and dank and damp and dripping with death’s poisonous remark,
slowly I turn my shivering and jittery back on you
while terror talks and walks straight up my frigid spine
and every vertebrae recoils in mortal fear
you creep pernicious up my frame like poison vine
but I am resolute because I want to gain
my freedom from your bottomless black empty jailer eyes
and rows of terrible sharp executioner teeth
and so it’s me, at last, it’s me that does you right…
I
abandon
you.
you horror,
you absolute
horror.
The High Cost of Being Trans
When ‘Midst the Gay I Meet
When ‘midst the gay I meet
That gentle smile of thine,
Though still on me it turns most sweet,
I scarce can call it mine:
But when to me alone
Your secret tears you show,
Oh, then I feel those tears my own,
And claim them while they flow.
Then still with bright looks bless
The gay, the cold, the free;
Give smiles to those who love you less,
But keep your tears for me.
The snow on Jura’s steep
Can smile in many a beam,
Yet still in chains of coldness sleep,
How bright soe’er it seem.
But, when some deep-felt ray,
Whose touch is fire, appears,
Oh, then the smile is warm’d away,
And, melting, turns to tears.
Then still with bright looks bless
The gay, the cold, the free;
Give smiles to those who love you less,
But keep your tears for me.
Moore, Thomas (1779 – 1852)
That Monolithic Blue
yep…that’s it,
the monolith.
Hush! Shh, yeah,
I know I know
it’s beautiful,
yadda yadda yadda
cus blue and layers
it’s carved and worn
by wind and time
and it chips off
pieces of itself
that melt and feed
oceans, and then feed
cloud hopes, which become
streams, rivers, lakes
and again back
to become itself
once more
and monolithic blue
born anew.
but just stand
here, awhile with me,
where I am frozen
and caught in the glare
of its pressure and presence
and eventually
your face will grow numb
your toes will lose movement
and you will feel
the tempting tentative tickle
of its sinister frozen fingers
around your warm and tender
heart, so red,
so achingly red
and stark against
that monolithic blue.
Groundhog Day Forever
there is a movie where the main character
lives Groundhog Day over and over
and over and over
and he can do what he wants
while everyone else
does the same old thing.
I think it’s safe to call that experience
dysphoria, because I live
the same old day, the same old over
and I remember the day before
and the day before that one
while everyone thinks it’s just that day only.
Knowing something that no one else knows
and carrying that–what–what would that be called,
burden, responsibility, honor, freedom,
carrying that sentence in my bones and marrow
those bones of lead and marrow of molten lava
and my superheated flesh constantly evaporating.
But what if we are all living Groundhog Day?
What if everyday we wake up, it’s just the same
day done again, but we only believe it is different,
because well it is, and all our thoughts and opinions
are just so much shadow that chases the groundhog
back underground to hide from eternal winter?
Eventually the man runs the gamut of options
and is reduced to meaningless repetition over and over
until he actually considers oeuvre, and oeuvre
and then things change, because he himself is changed…
and that is what makes the difference, releases us
from Groundhog Day Forever.
My 5 Nevers
I will never stop pursuing Them
for only They have the Words of Life.
I will never stop seeking Grace
for only in it is there power and mercy.
I will never give death the satisfaction
of my total surrender.
I will never stop seeking yieldedness
as my steady state of being.
I will never stop giving.
It’s what I do. It’s who I am.
Sworn this 14th day of March 2015
“pi day”.
vow expires when this day next happens
The Wrong Side of the Glass
Come close, up here, on the porch and draw near where I sit,
hunkered down, clinging close, pressed with all I am
against this barrier thin, austere, and yet impermeable
thru which I see, and speak, and yearn but over cannot cross.
I get naked, bare and slick and covered in Her Oil
and hurl myself hard, fearless, face first pounding in wild flails
until the fists of my heart break and bloody grow within this cage
and sorrow rises right alongside all my heartsick rage
at being born here in this place so richly furnished wrong
at hearing music so distinct but dissonant from my song
Maybe we together can make a crack in this stark mass
and relieve my long days spent here, on the wrong side of the glass.
I Hope You Are Here
…warm, snug.
Side by side, sisters
nestled against Her
and to each other
learning how to be white
and to bear all things
as our day dawns (you/me/She)
in all of our colours.
May I Ever Be Pink
May I ever be pink,
my heart’s hidden petticoats
tender and always-fresh.
May I ever find that place
hidden but accessible,
there in Mama’s Heart-Springs
where I can wash
in crimson founts crystal
clear and sweetly astringent.
Others might love green
still others regally wreathed
in Autumn’s Golden Gleam,
but it is pink for me,
pink always, tender,
present and near
May I ever be pink,
dwelling soft and
without fear.
Rip Me Open
go ahead and rip me open
see what makes me tick
where my pearls come from
inside my shells thick…
but I will then perish
my heart torn in two
yet if that act salves your pain
I’ll be torn for you
clams are ugly outside
not so great within
but perhaps, just like a clam
I’m more than my sin
“…he was unlikely to see a man doing the job that she did…”
He looked away. “I wish it wasn’t you doing this, Tiff. You’re not sixteen yet, and I see you running around nursing people and bandaging and who knows what chores. You shouldn’t have to be doing all of that.”
“Yes, I know,” said Tiffany.
“Why?” he asked again.
“Because other people don’t, or won’t, or can’t, that’s why.”
“It’s not your business, is it?”
“I make it my business. I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business,” Tiffany said quickly.
“Yes, but we all thought it was going to be about whizzing around on brooms and suchlike, not cutting old ladies’ toenails for them.”
“But people don’t understand what’s needed,” said Tiffany. “It’s not that they are bad; it’s just that they don’t think. Take old Mrs. Stocking, who’s got nothing in the world except her cat and whole lot of arthritis. People were getting her a bite to eat often enough, that is true, but no one was noticing that her toenails were so long they were tangling up inside her boots and so she’d not been able to take them off for a year! People around here are okay when it comes to food and the occasional bunch of flowers, but they are not around when things get a little on the messy side. Witches notice these things. Oh, there’s a certain amount of whizzing about, that’s true enough, but mostly it’s only to get quickly to somewhere there is a mess.”
Her father shook his head. “And you like doing this?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Tiffany had to think about this, her father’s eyes never leaving her face. “Well, Dad, you know how Granny Aching always used to say, ‘Feed them as is hungry, clothe them as is naked, and speak up for them as has no voices’? Well, I reckon there is room in there for ‘Grasp for them as can’t bend, reach for them as can’t stretch, wipe for them as can’t twist,’ don’t you? And because sometimes you get a good day, that makes up for all the bad days and, just for a moment, you hear the world turning,” said Tiffany. “I can’t put it any other way.”
Her father looked at her with a kind of proud puzzlement. “And you think that’s worth it, do you?”
“Yes, Dad!”
“Then I am proud of you, jiggit; you are doing a man’s job!”
He’d used the pet name only the family knew, and so she kissed him politely and did not tell him that he was unlikely to see a man doing the job that she did.
~ Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
(Alternate cover by Alicia B.)
Excuses are Easy. Actions, now they are tough!
The Work of A Bee
this is me, a busy bee
flitting from flower to stem
and blossom and stalk.
flitting from flower to stem
and blossom and stalk.
it’s tough work
dragging that pollen
all sticky and clingy
from place to place
where pride is unsheathed
and starves on itself!
if it weren’t for me
those poor lil bloomings
so pretty but hungry
would wither and die
alone with themselves
the few chosen few…
well, I unmark them quick!
those marked for death
as I buzz and I murmer
all covered in sticky stuff
lugging around
the seed of all life
anyone got any sugar water?
trade ya some honey
and I won’t even sting!
I learned yesterday that when you see a bee on the ground that isn’t moving, it’s not necessarily dead, it’s probably just dead tired from carrying lots of pollen and needs re-energising.
So if you mix a tiny bit of water with some sugar and let it drink it will give it the boost it needs to continue on its way. Bizarrely, this exact thing happened today! I found a knackered bee, mixed up some sugar water, gave it a drink and watched it guzzle and guzzle then suddenly come back to life.
It was amazing! Thank you patrick, it was an excellent tip that i’ll never forget and will continue to pass on to others!
To those of you with mastery over your feelings…
…be merciful to those of us who don’t.
Either you are really strong and awesome, possessing all the skills of Siegfried and Roy combined with the Crocodile Hunter mixed together with Dr. Doolittle…
…or our feelings are Godzilla to your Gollum, and untameable. And the fact that we are surviving speaks of unspeakable courage and persistence and never say die stubbornness…
either way, if you can master your feelings, take it easy on the rest of us mere mortals
“It Would Falsify Everything You Taught Me…”
Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans. Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!! 🙂 ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…
But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece. And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.
You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.
Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.
You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.
We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.
So there is that.
This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.
But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain. He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children. He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…
…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.
On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.
He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself! It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!” And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.
That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person. It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way. He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”. And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”
See? All about him. His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.
Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts. His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.
Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.
Twice.
And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man. Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).
Constance…is this not something close to suicide? Friendshipicide? Is not this towering silence some sort of death? Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?
And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…
“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”
Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from. But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective. Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker. Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.
As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…
…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).
It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person. You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes. You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…
…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.
I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th). It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.
And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported. I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.
…and as to men? “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:
There’s no trust,
No faith, no honesty in men. All perjured,
All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
Ah, where’s my man?—Give me some aqua vitae.—
These griefs, these woes, these sorrows make me old.
I Am Words
what am I?
besides being
a tranny bitch
a tranny freak
a shim
a shemale
a heshe
a waste of a perfectly good man
a river too far
that’s what I’m called
by others who other me
everyday each day
over and over
again and again.
and insults and slurs?
they are the costume
they make for me
to comfort themselves
while searching the mirror
and seeing themselves
while trying to get
a handle on me…am i a singer
of this song that spins
out every day
into the ether
right here and then gone?
am I a brush
grasped in a hand
waved at the world
leaving some streaks
of texture and color
smeared thick on the day?
I think I am words
for they never stop
welling inside me
piled up and pushing
there thru the darkness
under the bright stars
slicing the darkness
with brilliance and beauty
i am my words
the brilliant and broken
the loving and least
in total summation
the holy and horrible
here all at once.
Dust and Ashes Redux
I fear
being able
to soundly navigate
through noisy choruses.
I fear
the blind spots
that I have—
and nurture.
The will of God
involves giving our lives
for the sake of others
on this downward path
this downward path of Jesus
that I follow
or try to.
She tears
my clenched fingers
from my own throat
She says
put others
before me
(interests, preferences, desires)
and this putting
endures beyond
stronger than death.
is there a resurrection
from this desperate
self-preservation?
is there a life raised
here/now
where I can matter
to someone
and result in
a shared existence
renewed,
restored
hopeful?
She says
I will only find out
when I seek not to save
but to lose my life
as I have said before
it is the season
of dust and ashes
No Holiday For Love
Il n’y a pas de vacances à l’amour, ça n’existe pas. L’amour, il faut le vivre complètement avec son ennui et tout, il n’y a pas de vacances possibles à ça — Marguerite Duras
Soft and Furious
words are all I have left,
soft and furious
like ocean waves
breaking on themselves
far out to sea
and lonely
because there are no rocks
to dash themselves on
sometimes those words
get frozen inside my mouth
because everything around me
is cold and static
but the words are insistent
and well up inside me
soft and furious
Back In Black
The rawkus bands boast
of being back
and in black.
Like somehow this
confers some strange authority.
It’s like a mantle they don,
and they are infused
with some strange reckless power
and become “more than”
in electronic banshee screams.
But I am different…back in black
because I was knocked there,
nine ways to Sunday.
Kicked back into shrouds
and disabused of slipper notions.
And yeah, I am back…in black,
and weeping over Rama
My, my, hey hey, and Neil Young
and Rust and Burnout
and back…in black.
Does Every Butterfly Still See Itself As A Caterpillar?
I literally and truly do not see it, what others say.
Except for the ugly parts, which is everything
Except for the ugly parts, which is everything
Maybe they are there, the wings…maybe not
I am not the one to say.
I am not the one to say.
Perhaps God will one day show the truth about me, and all will cringe then, I am certain!
Why I always ALWAYS engage and encourage
Omg, my stricken heart
“She lives the poetry she cannot write.”
| — | Oscar Wilde |
Mama…PLEASE! Help me to be this!!!
When I feel so far from this and reeling, well, really it is the only thing I can control and choose that works for anyone’s benefit. I need to find grace for this though. Cus the voices are bad…and strong…and no I am not talking about any voices other than the ones common to us all in our heart.
“Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.”
— Marvin J. Ashton
Nothing But Trash
I can’t seem to get it out of my head right now,
that voice that says I am nothing but trash.
I watched them eat today…all the love I poured out
into a soup made of cabbage and heart, tomatoes and soul,
sausage and love…and oodles of noodles spiced and
called Minestrone…
how could they know what I add to it,
as I stir it, sing over it, taste it, and most of all
picture their faces and hear their glad voices
as they partake of it and are made more whole?
I don’t use any measuring cups for adding me, I just
pour it in, and then add a bit more…that’s who I want to be.
That’s who I think I am, try to be…
but the voice, gawd that gibbering skritching itchy voice
so insinuating, sibilant, and reminding…it never forgets,
it never lets me forget either.
oh fuuuu…how I wish I could forget making
a love offering, excited and sweet and for
a Once in a Lifetime Special Occasion…
and to the trash bin…to the trash
and that is what the voice says I am
a transgender piece of trash not worth
the paper I am printed on.
“you call yourself grace, at least have the good grace
to go die, or at least put yourself in the trash”.
I poured me in! My me…in there!
So nothing, me…so trashy me…so dangerous and poison,
me.
and then voice speaks of the transgression of the me,
and the infinite regress of guilty, and
guilty by association…
not a good time for this garbage
nothing but trash.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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