Face It, You’re a Man.

I’m pretty speechless at this point, though I shouldn’t be surprised. I saw an ad for Dockers on the way to work today that spoke to me like no other advertisement has.

“FACE IT, YOU’RE A MAN. WEAR THE PANTS,” it called from down the block. I did a double take. Unfortunately, I’ve spent the past few years teaching myself how to filter my rage when I see any sort of -phobia or -ism in advertising. I probably should, but don’t want to, spend every minute fuming at the myriad ways the advertising industry upholds transphobia, heterosexism, sexism, patriarchy, racism, fatphobia, ableism, classism, ageism, and several other forms of oppression I know I must be missing. This one overloaded my filter, and got me shaking.

After a quick internet search, I found their wittily coined “MANifesto,” which blames the crumble of society on everyone who is not a Dockers-wearing, steak eating, chivalrous manly man. Wtf? Thanks for devaluing every gender expression except stereotypical masculinity. Men “stranded” on the road between “boyhood and androgyny”? Men who drink “foamy non-fat lattes” and eat salads with plastic forks? Women having to open doors [don't they know their frail, skinny arms are too weak?] A “genderless society”?! A SOCIETY THAT DOESN’T NEED OPPRESSIVE, CONFINING FORMS OF MASCULINITY?! Gasp.

No one is capable of assisting the elderly, opening doors, maintaining cities, raising children, getting their hands dirty, or being heroes, let alone grown-ups, unless they are MEN with a capital MEN. The call of manhood only comes to the few, the proud: those assigned a sex and matching gender type that they feel comfortable with. And if they choose not to answer, well, we’re all screwed. WEAR THE PANTS.

the coldest winter i ever had…

thanks, Mark Twain, your words of wisdom ring true. but! who knew that october is san francisco’s summer? answer: probably everyone who lives here. exception: me. just a few days into november, and it’s already starting to get cloudy/foggy/cold/ominously dark again. october’s weather was a blessing. it remains my favorite month, even on this coast.

so i am moving. the final destination is uncertain, but i’m out of here on december 19, and i’ll hopefully be traveling between miami and austin and doing my thang/not working until the beginning of february. there’s no rush in figuring it out, i guess, and i kind of want to not have a plan for the first time in my life. i must say, i am reeeeeally excited for winter in the South. and for sunshine. i know after a month and a half of this cold drear, i’m going to be dying for some beach-the-day-after-christmas weather.

i’m sad that i didn’t get around this coast much [at all], and will hopefully at least semi-rectify that before i go. i’ve got thanksgiving free, and rideshares exist all over. i really, really want to get to vancouver before december, but i can’t imagine that happening. tickets at this time of year are ballsass expensive, and it’s a long ride. we’ll see what comes up.

as for the near future, i’m excited.

i haven’t written in a long time. oops. there are a lot of things i haven’t done, really. i have a stack of clothes that need patching (though i did get through half of it), a stack of zines that need reading, and a stack of letters that deserve responses. i’m trying to learn how to do what i want when i want to do it, rather than wasting time on the internet (this doesn’t count), or hanging out when i would rather be doing other things.

there’s a lot i want to do with my days, and work really gets in the way. i’m trying to make the most of my time outside of the office, trying to figure out how to turn off my work brain. i can’t wait to not work again. really, i can’t wait.

san francisco is beautiful in october. i wanna hang out and craft in the sunshine!

“Social activists are also prone to Doing in a dissociated way. After all, we are products of our society and it isn’t easy to change such a deeply ingrained pattern of Doing. In addition, we often feel an urgency to accomplish as much as possible because of the destructive momentum of our current society. There is a trap in this. We often ignore our relationships with each other while organizing meetings. We forget the depths of our souls while pressuring people, institutions, corporations, and governments to wake up. When we do these things, we are acting partly out of the same mindset that produced many of our problems in the first place. If we approach social change in this way, we may prevent some of the worst abuses, but we won’t really be able to transform society.”

- Jay Earley

upon leaving Miami:

while i was in miami, i pulled my record player out of the closet and got to listen to albums that i hadn’t heard in the better part of a year. American Football and Jason Anderson got played over and over. they are just too fitting. and now, sadly, i don’t have either on my computer. that shall be rectified.

someday i’ll post more than lyrics, but, for now, they speak to my feelings infinitely more than i ever could. this song is appropriate to leaving both austin and miami. at the end of my trip, this is how i feel.

i’m thinking about
leaving
and how i should say
goodbye
with a handshake
or an embrace
a kiss on the cheek
or possibly all three

well maybe i’ve been wrong
maybe my intentions
are irrelevant
but honestly it’s just not for me
we’ve both been so unhappy
so let’s just see
what happens
when the summer ends

how i feel about being in Miami

My city is still breathing
But barely, its true
Through buildings gone missing like teeth
The sidewalks are watching me think about you
Sparkled with broken glass

I’m back with scars to show
Back with the streets I know
Will never take me anywhere but here

The stain in the carpet, this drink in my hand
The strangers whose faces I know
We meet here for our dress rehearsal to say
I wanted it this way

Wait for the year to drown
Spring forward,
Fall back down;
I’m trying not to wonder where you are

All this time
Lingers undefined
Someone choose
Who’s left and who’s leaving

Memory will rust and erode into lists
Of all that you gave me
A blanket, some matches,
This pain in my chest
The best parts of lonely

Duct tape and soldered wires,
New words for old desires
And every birthday card I threw away

I wait in 4/4 time
Count yellow highway lines
That you’re relying on to lead you home

things i see

the big ol’ moon out one window
crit silhouetted, behind the curtain, on the sill of another
darkened treetops through the third

i love laying in my bed with the windows open, the filmy curtains drawn, in those last moments of alertness before i give in, with a roll to one side, and stretch into sleep.

hold on
to the corners of today
we’ll fold them up to save until it’s needed

stand still
let me scrub that brackish line
that you got when something rose and then receded

sometimes there’s no more for me to say. i wish that i could take pictures of moments – like a photographer from the periphery. i wish i could capture the softness of those eyes, the tilt of that smile. the quiet calm of those moments i can’t disturb for a flash. moments i’ll never be able to catch. or hold onto. so i’ll try to remember the feeling, and fold it up to save until it’s needed.

coming back together

things are happening. i can’t even attempt a coherent post at this point, so i won’t. te’s here; it’s pretty great. i’m getting words for thoughts i thought made me crazy, or at least a person with inescapably inexplicable thoughts/doubts/fears. i’m learning a lot, growing a lot, really fast. i have nothing particularly profound to say – only vague. i’m good at vague. i’ve been keeping up with writing things down. i’ll expand on some of them in here soon. life’s scary, but fear can be productive. or maybe that’s just baseless way of making myself feel better for now.

i already knew i’d fallen apart
but that’s the first time i noticed
that i was
slowly
but surely
coming back together.

i’ve been waiting months to say that.

Home: it seems i leave and you stay

there’s so much emphasis placed on moving away. i hadn’t felt homesick here until this past month. well, not in the way i would traditionally think of homesickness. it’s more like being lost, totally uprooted, and disconnected from the things i love. not a sharp pain, an ache. i’m starting to realize the importance of staying, of going back, of home. there’s so much glory in going away. of severing ties or letting them die, of being free in the ability to leave. i want to find the freedom in staying. i want to mend those ties. what’s that song about tendons stretching across the country to reach each other. ah, yeah:

When we’re on different sides of the globe
I thought we’d keep our veins tangled
like a pair of mic cables,
And if there ain’t enough slack to reach
that we’d solder them together
and across oceans they’d stretch.

– Why?, Gemini (birthday song)

sometimes it feels like things are coming together.