We’re not hierarchical, you see. We never were. But we are powerfully acquisitive. We acquire new life—seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell—a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies. Do you understand me?

--Octavia E. Butler, Dawn

my wife is a big sci-fi fan… i like sci-fi too… our local book store, Stanza, runs a sci-fi reading group… we joined it… 

last month we read Dawn, by Octavia Butler… the book is remarkable… nuanced, imaginative and thought provoking… a compelling exploration of human nature…

Dawn is the first book of a trilogy chronicling the human/Oankali story… it takes place on an Oankali spaceship orbiting earth… Lilith, a human who has been brought out of suspended animation after a 250 year slumber, is the main protagonist… she is one of the few survivors of nuclear war on earth… the far more advanced Oankali “rescued" her and others from certain death, and are in the process of resuscitating the species and returning them to earth… but, there is a catch… humans have been resurrected by the Oankali to “trade," as they put it, genetic material with them, which is what the Oankali have evolved to do…

the Oankali have spent a very long time searching for a species to resuscitate…  they choose a species that has come to its end because of its own destructive actions… they distinguish between species that truly want to cease to exist and commit species suicide, and species that still have a will to exist… it will be no surprise that the humans are not entirely enthusiastic about their “good fortune"…

the humans are a pretty sorry lot as rendered by Butler… they are fearful, suspicious, intelligent, stubborn, scheming and violent… any affection one could have for them comes form being one of them, or being the Oankali, who are enraptured with them… upon being woken up, the humans immediately begin fighting and trying to kill one another and their captors… 

the Oankali come off much better than humans… they work hard to undersand and manage their humans in a “humane” way, and to establish a viable repopulation and recombination strategy, while maintaining strong, Oankali, ethical treatment boundaries… they are not intentionally cruel… in many ways they are kind, caring and loving… and they are beneficial… in addition to rescuing humans from complete oblivion, they cure them of cancer and provide them with the most profound sexual experiences they will ever have…

we are given reasons to dislike the Oankali… they manage humans like children, giving them agency only within the boundaries they set, which widen as the humans “mature” by adapting themselves to their circumstances… as long as humans pursue constructive goals with the agency they are granted, the Oankali don’t intervene…

the Oankali are incredibly ugly and frightening to humans… they are controlling, coercive and manipulative… they are borderline parasitic… they indulge in something adjacent to date drug rape in pursuit of their own pleasure and a strong bond between the humans and themselves… still, they believe their actions are benefiting humans even as they benefit themselves…

The principle of evil consists in messing into other people’s affairs.

– Ezra Pound via The Gift, Lewis Hyde

i preferred the Oankali to the humans… it wasn’t even close in my mind… but i was surprised to find i was in the minority on this… 2/3’s of the reading group thought the Oankali were creepy at minimum, and many seemed to think they were downright evil… i argued my case as best i could, but did not persuade any of the “humanists" to my point of view…

when one group member said this was their second reading of the book and that they found the Oankali much more creepy than they had the first time, i decided to re-read the book to see if i had missed something that would bring me around to the majority opinion of the Oankali… having read it twice now, i am prepared to double down on my Oankali fandom…

Butler clearly intends for the option to side with the humans against the aliens to have a strong pull… we are tribal creatures and stick with our tribes… my country right or wrong… my political party/candidate, right or wrong… my species, right or wrong… Butler creatively plays on fear of "the other" while presenting the Oankali as a species we can learn to love if we can get past their otherness, particularly their ugliness, and their total control of us… i wondered if siding with the humans was a matter of human solidarity… my species, love them or leave them… 

for a long time i have had the idea that humans almost universally assume they are at the top of the intelligence pyramid and that any further development of intelligence will happen through and because of them (thus AI?)… i think this in spite of all the literature and cinema we have that suggests we know better… cinema in particular is full of encounters with more technologically developed (and therefore more intelligent?) alien life… aliens are almost always hostile and well equipped to subjugate us… we prefer happy endings, so we almost always find a way to free ourselves from alien dominance and carry on… we live to fight another day… 

in Dawn, humans had already defeated themselves--an uncomfortable truth about the likely outcome for the human species that we also constantly explore in art, literature and cinema, even as we stick our collective heads in the sand and fail to act…

i had no trouble accepting the idea that humanity was fatally flawed--though i am not sure i agree that intelligence + hierarchy = self immolation… for me it is primal instinct + technological advancement that will do us in… or, our tendency to become genocidal/suicidal extremists… Hitler and Nazi Germany for example… or the evangelical Christians who are all in on nuclear war as long as it starts in the Middle East per prophecy…  many actively work to bring it about while others pass memes around declaring their acceptance of Jesus Christ as savior and lord, and their preparedness for nuclear immolation and the rapture…

Butler’s premise aligns with my own conclusions about humanity… as far as i am concerned, humans had blown their chance at unfettered agency by destroying themselves with it and were likely to do so again if given the chance… the Oankali offered some level of existence into the future, which would be cancer free, long lived, and offer the most profound sex ever… i could imagine myself accepting the Oankali gene trade bargain…

and so, i wonder, why am i open to the Oankali proposition when most of my group of fellow humans are not?… is my lack of loyalty to my species pragmatic?… evolved?… or a failure of self and species preservation instincts?…

The principle of evil consists in messing into other people’s affairs.

– Ezra Pound via The Gift, Lewis Hyde

Civility requires working on yourself, not just leaving things as they are, but making them over. It involves a struggle to reshape ourselves.

– A Secular Age, Charles Taylor

i think…

has evil ever been defined so succinctly…

as Ezra Pound did

and…

evil is not…

a foundational condition of the universe…

but a capacity of intelligence

i wonder…

is evil…

a bug…

or a feature

and…

can messing into others affairs…

ever be justified

to stop…

destruction of others…

or self

to stop…

selfish exploitation

and…

who decides…

what is acceptable messing into

and…

if there is no level at which a being can choose…

do evil and good exist

and…

what is the role…

of religion…

of government…

in circumscribing evil

and…

what is the inflection point…

between…

greater good and tyranny…

between…

benevolent authority and despotism

i believe…

that…

civility intercepts evil

but…

we have to agree to civility

and…

when we have…

maintenance is required

that…

desire for power…

invites evil to walk abroad

that…

ignorance…

is a vacuum…

into which evil easily expands

that…

accumulate power…

creates a differential space…

into which evil easily slips

that…

accumulate power…

of individuals…

of corporations…

of institutions…

compromises civility of society

that…

accumulate power…

of an ignorant majority…

is no less prone…

to breaching the civility membrane

i think…

that…

much of what the people argue about…

is the messing into their affairs…

by government…

by institutions…

by corporations…

by powerful individuals

i see…

technologies…

that…

facilitate messing into people’s lives…

on an unprecedented scale

that…

victimize…

through technological bait and switch…

offering tenuous, addictive, chimeras of community…

in exchange for the datapoints of our existence

that…

we have given a great power differential…

to the collectors…

managers…

and exploiters of our data

it is time…

to stop…

the techno-fascist juggernaut…

by choosing friendship and hugs…

over click warfare

to return…

to the civility…

of face-to-face, respectful, discourse…

of knowing our neighbors…

of coffee with friends…

of potluck suppers…

Hmmm…

Do we proclaim civilization dead then?…

I experience both good and evil as real, and see them as necessary opposites; but while evil can, goodness knows, locally overwhelm good, it cannot subsume good into itself. The goodness of love can embrace its opposite; the evil of hate cannot. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

i have been rereading Reclaiming the Sacred by Jeff Golden… i have reached the place i originally felt was a little over-the-top “woo-woo”… a kind of new age mysticism of love is the answer, we are stardust, and so forth… i struggle with this kind of message… it seems naive… it seems to ignore the calamities that unfold in the universe and the pure evil that humankind too often manifests … it seems to ignore hate…

in the quote above from The Matter With Things, i am offered a framing that allows me to believe love is the answer, even as i understand love can lose locally… greed, hate, arrogance, covetousness, etc., which are centered in the materialist-capitalist world, can overwhelm it…

in The Ballad of Love and Hate, by the Avett Brothers, a similar belief in the largeness of love is expressed…

Love has been waiting, patient and kind

Just wanting a phone call or some kind of sign

That the one that she cares for who’s out of his mind

Will make it back safe to her arms

Hate stumbles forward and leans in the door

Weary head hung down, eyes to the floor

He says, “Love, I’m sorry” and she says, “What for?”

“I’m yours and that’s it, whatever”

“I should not have been gone for so long”

“I’m yours and that’s it, forever”

“Your mine and that’s it, forever”

the power of forgiveness…

this is in tune with statements like, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”… Dr. Martin Luther King favored a non-violent approach to resistance, is this love embracing hate?…

when the current physical universe began, cosmologists tell us that…

… The Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. But today, everything we see from the smallest life forms on Earth to the largest stellar objects is made almost entirely of matter. Comparatively, there is not much antimatter to be found. Something must have happened to tip the balance. One of the greatest challenges in physics is to figure out what happened to the antimatter, or why we see an asymmetry between matter and antimatter.¹

metaphorically, this feels like the imbalance suggested between love and hate above… there is enough love in the world to subsume hate… creative existence wins over annihilation…

The Matter With Things is a long argument that we have lost our way… a long argument for the existence and necessity of God… McGilchrist is Christian… his concept of god, while grounded in Christianity, is expansive in ways i have not encountered before… his God is not all knowing, all powerful, or vengeful… his God is a co-creative consciousness with us of all that can be experienced… this God is the creative imbalance that leads to something, not nothing… love embracing hate… the long moral arc bending towards justice…

Jeff Golden writes:

Yet these saints and sages are pointing to something quite different: the divine as dynamically (beautifully, wondrously) transformed, expanded, recreated in every moment, through each of us and our experiences—through you. (Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World by Jeff Golden)

as McGilchrist noted, locally, hate can overwhelm love and wreaks havoc… we have no right to expect immunity from havoc, which has been my fortunate experience for most of my life…

there were dark ages once…

an empire fell and it took five hundred years to recover, if that’s what we did… the hard truth of the moment may be that we are witnessing the collapse of the Western Euro-American empire… we may be embarking on hundreds of years of something utterly different…

i wish we could fast forward however many hundreds of years it will take to move through this collapse, if that is what is happening, to something better… i know we can’t… but i refuse to allow the darkness i believe is coming to overwhelm my joy… i choose to embrace hate with a straight jacket of love of community…

what do you think is going on and how will you meet the moment?…

Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #304 - Have you ever imagined that Bob Dylan would be attending your shows and writing nice tweets about them? : The Red Hand Files

The world had grown thoroughly disenchanted, and its feverish obsession with politics and its leaders had thrown up so many palisades that had prevented us from experiencing the presence of anything remotely like the spirit, the sacred, or the transcendent – that holy place where joy resides.

this message brought me home to myself and shined a light on my path of resistance… i will refuse to let politics, politicians and this difficult moment steal my joy…

i am rethinking my mental, emotional and behavioral landscape… my affiliations… my sources of information… my avenues of action… i no longer believe politics and politicians can take us where we need to go… i don’t believe Kamala Harris, had she won, would have made my life appreciably better, though i do think she could have kept it from getting the kind of worse i expect from 45’s new administration…

in truth, my life is pretty good now, but i don’t know how long that pretty good would last under either Republican or Democrat management… corporations, capitalism and materialism will not unwrap their malignant hands from around the throat of our potential to be happy… the system is rigged ever more in favor of greed and selfishness… the only answer i can come up with is to disengage… have as little to do with corporations, capitalism and materialism as possible… be the change i want to see…

i have decided to change my party affiliation from Democrat to Independent… i won’t be able to vote in primaries (something i think should be changed), but i need to mentally occupy the space of “what have you done lately to win my vote?”… of course i am assuming there will be meaningful voting in the future… there is also something about putting myself in the neutral independent ground that i believe will allow me to think more critically about the system in general…

this morning i read an article about lab grown salmon and chicken… according to the author, it is getting pretty good, especially the chicken¹ … the supposed excitement here is for meat eaters committed to stopping the abuse of animals in factory farms and attendant greenhouse gas emissions… they will have a tastes good alternative that doesn’t abuse animals and throw methane into the atmosphere… this is not a step forward… it’s the further corporatization of the food chain… it is another step away from having an intimate connection with the planet and cosmos.. i don’t believe in factory farms… i think they are horrific… a sign that we are societally sick… but one of the reasons we are sick is we have lost connection with animals themselves… for most of human history we were in a more respectful relationship with fields, forests, rivers, streams, oceans, plants and animals… we ate mostly plants and insects… our diets were not centered on meat… killing an animal involved ceremony and thanksgiving as did harvests… we understood that we were an intimate part of, not separate from nature… it is hard to see how lab grown food is a better future…

in Jeff Golden’s book, Reclaiming The Sacred, there is a top five list of actions we can take to reduce our individual impact on climate and animals… my wife and i have made three of the five changes suggested… we don’t fly much, we don’t drive much and we have a hybrid car so, when we do, we use a third less gas, we don’t have children (he suggests fewer children)… eating a plant based diet and purchasing renewable source energy are what we have left to do… did i mention we have solar panels on our roof?… we don’t draw much energy from the grid to begin with… still, we need to opt into renewable source energy from the grid… related to this last change, we still heat our house and cook with gas… we will renovate our kitchen soon and move to all electric… we will explore alternatives for heating…

when we get home from Block Island i want to initiate monthly pot luck suppers with friends and community… i feel a need to be face to face with my people…

i have decided to stop watching TV news… even Nicole Wallace, who i grew to love during the pandemic… TV is designed to be compelling… the most compelling kind of story they can present is a train wreck… it’s in their interest to create the impression of a train wreck even when there isn’t one… and when there is, make it seem worse than it is… it’s in their interest to instill fear in us… it may well be that we should be afraid right now, but i doubt TV news will make me any more prepared for the oncoming train wreck… i will read the news instead… i am working on curating my sources now…

how are you preparing?…

i have, just now, finished the closing chapter of The Matter With Things… an argument about left and right brain hemisphere roles… the author, Iain McGilchrist, tells us the world has settled too much in the left-hemisphere, and ignores a right-hemisphere way of seeing and understanding, which he says is more complete and approaches nearer to truth… he argues that science in tandem with materialist society have driven us this way…

in the end, his book becomes an argument for the existence and necessity of God… i am agnostic, but i am compelled by his idea of God… this God is not an over and above one… not vengeful… not omniscient, not all powerful… this God is coming into being as we are coming into being… we have a co-creative relationship with this god…

he centers on Christianity as what makes most sense to him, though he discusses many and diverse religious traditions in a positive light… he believes that we need religion and that it should be pursued in community through communal-traditions and rituals to be most effective…

i struggle with Christianity… i am not sure i could return to any Christian church… i am agnostic on the subject of god… i believe in sacredness and some concept of the divine… but organized religion always seems to go astray… Christian fundamentalism runs amok in the background of the current political moment in my country…

i was surprised by McGilchrist’s pivot to God… but as i contemplate this, i realize that a number of books i have recently read argue that a return to some kind of sacred mediated relationship with the earth and cosmos is needed… all five of these books do…

• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Reclaiming The Sacred, Jeff Golden
• Sacred Economics, Charles Eisentstein
• The Gift, Lewis Hyde
• All About Love, bell hooks

i wonder how coincidental it is that i finish The Matter With Things, which i started at the end of the pandemic, at this painful moment in my country’s history?…

i recommend The Matter With Things highly… it is a long read, but there is substantial reward for the effort…

In the same way we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact. (Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion)

Intuition is also a threat to a world-picture based on administration, adherence to ordained procedures, the power of technology, and a belief in the superiority of abstract mentation over embodied being. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Living Truthfully, Growing Spiritually

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary reason many of us will never know love. It is impossible to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth when the core of one’s being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and lies. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… i have been thinking about this quote for the past couple of days… i have been thinking about what it has to say to my trans-feminine exploration… from my point of view, my spiritual growth has been enhanced by this truth coming to the surface… i can’t say i was hiding it, lying to myself and others… i don’t feel i repressed it… rather… it was a latent part of my being that stepped forward vigorously at a moment in time that was ripe…

… as i have written before, a number of things happened that cleared the space for it… the death of my father… the current hyper intolerant conservative political scene (which my father supported)… being retired… living in a liberal community… all made space for my feminine to blossom…

… i recently discovered that some Native American tribes describe what i am experiencing as two spirited… a person who’s sense of self doesn’t match what the prevailing culture expects from people with their biological sex… two spirited people often become spiritual leaders… they are viewed as having a fuller spiritual connection because of their two spirited nature…

… i don’t want to appropriate a culture that isn’t my own… but it is a good way to get at the spiritual growth bell hooks is talking about and i am feeling… spiritual growth requires honesty with self and before the world… from a position of honesty, growth happens and one can aid others with their growth journeys… only from a position of honesty can one love themselves and those around them in the sense that bell hooks writes about…

Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslim, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… there is, at this moment, a serious threat that Christian fundamentalists will gain control of the government in the United States… high on their agenda is the repression of LGBTQPlus communities… trans people in particular are targets of their enmity… they are enabled by power lusting politicians… there is no love in such religion and politics, as bell hooks points out…

… society does, of course, have an interest in curbing some forms of behavior… murder, rape, incest, theft, destruction of property… the list is long… people engaged in this behavior may be living out a kind of truth in themselves… they may be acting out past trauma that leaves them unable to love themselves and live truthfully… either way, these behaviors harm other people… tolerance and compassion blaze a trail for spiritual growth of self, community, and society, but stop at the threshold of harm to others…

… the difficulty is distinguishing true harm from supposed harm, or when the growth opportunity warrants an attendant harm…

An important read. Chaos in this election is baked in. Voting in huge numbers is a must.

September 2, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

The celebration of violence is now deeply embedded in the MAGA movement with leaders like North Carolina lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, who recently attacked an assortment of enemies and assured his audience: “Some folks need killing!” As Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo wrote on August 27, this violent tendency has become for MAGA Republicans a fantasy about deploying the military against American citizens.

Climbing Out of the Pit.

In schizophrenia, as in modernity, there is a relentless antagonism towards nature – both in humanity and in the whole natural world. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Life-threatening nihilism abounds in contemporary culture, crossing the boundaries of race, class, gender, and nationality. At some point it affects all our lives. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… i am feeling more hopeful these days… the shift in the US political situation allows me to think the nightmare we have been living through might come to an end…

… still, the world in general is a hot mess…

… capitalist system divides both materials and living beings into exploitable commodities… this exploitation oppresses many, enriches few… power flows to the enriched…

… i want to believe that humanity, rather than destroy itself, will be able to move away from exploitation and oppressive power dynamics to a relationship of compassion and reciprocity with one another and the planet… there is no cosmic law that dictates that outcome… that dictates people survive at all… it is our responsibility to figure it out, or not…

… what would a system that didn’t exploit look like?… can we imagine it?… can we bring it into being?…

… the world as it should be meets the world as it is…

Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. In the realm of the political, among the religious, in our families, and in our romantic lives, we see little indication that love informs decisions, strengthens our understanding of community, or keeps us together. This bleak picture in no way alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love will prevail. We still believe in love’s promise. **(bell hooks, All About Love)**

… love is powerful…

… love is not all-powerful…

… love does not eliminate strife…

… love makes strife bearable…

… love does not free us from hard things…

… love itself is a hard thing…

… we expect from love what love cannot give…

… better to think of love as a capable captain in stormy seas…

… still, sometimes the ship founders and all is lost…

Nurturing Work, Power Work

Lydon sees the world that we have traditionally thought of as “woman’s work” as a place to discover godliness through the act of creating domestic bliss. A blissful household is one where love can flourish. (bell hooks, All About Love)

Some ideas about the nature of men, women and work, expressed in the style of bell hooks.

Masculine and feminine are complimentary approaches to the world that require each other. I do not think of masculine residing only in the male body, nor feminine residing only in the female body. Men and woman can, and should, have a range of qualities from masculine to feminine and feminine to masculine. For many in American culture, masculine and feminine have been stuck in perpetual opposition by the myths of Marlboro Man (extreme masculine) and Marilyn Monroe (extreme feminine). Patriarchal structure has led to a Marlboro Man domineering culture, where women are valued only for sex and procreation. This has been changing, though we are at an inflection moment where it is possible to go backwards.

In the above quote, I would change “woman’s work” to “nurturing work.” Nurturing work is feminine in character. Both men and women can nurture. Likewise, “men’s work” becomes “power work.” Power work is to be understood as work that requires strength, narrow focus and aggression, which combine to affect change in the environment. Power work is masculine in nature. Both men and women can exercise power.

Presently, women are as likely to be engaged in power work as men. Most of the power work women engage in supports and perpetuates the capitalist patriarchal system. Men are more engaged in nurturing work than they were, but still not as much as women.

Capitalism and patriarchy make too much of power work and too little of nurturing work. Power work and its effects have overrun the planet, causing much harm. A new balance needs to be struck between power work and nurturing work.

It is almost ten months now since I began to manifest my feminine being to the outside world. I grew my hair longer, started wearing lipstick, began scouring women’s clothing sites and buying a new wardrobe. Then I began presenting femininely in public. I was very anxious about the pushback I expected to get and rather surprised when it didn’t happen. To be sure, there have been disapproving looks from strangers, men mostly. Most significantly, there has been pushback from the women who have known me the longest. My wife, my mother and sister. They’ve had to adjust their idea of me which has been a process for them.

The most pleasant surprise of all, however, has been the number of relative strangers who have gone out of their way to affirm my feminine forward presentation. A neighbor from a few doors up was driving by and stopped to tell me he thought I had been rocking my outfits lately. Another neighbor I often pass during early morning walks made a point of telling me how cute my outfits were. A vender in the farmer’s market told me she had been noticing me for a while and that she loved my style.

I am not naive. I know I can expect some ugly moments in the future. But for now, I am basking in the warmth of loving acceptance.

… we have been watching the olympics… a few nights ago, something called rugby sevens, which seems the equivalent of speed chess but with rugby teams, was airing… France was against Fiji, a dominating force in the sport… at stake was a gold medal… at the end of the first 7 minutes (half-time) the teams were tied… in the second half, Antoine Dupont came onto the field for France… he proceeded to, according to the announcers, single-handedly dispatch the Fijians, becoming directly or indirectly responsible for 21 points… he was something to watch… a fierce anomaly that seemed to surprise the Fijians…

… it led me to think about our western civilization ideal of the exceptional individual… we are fascinated by them… sports celebrities, arts celebrities, film and TV celebrities, science celebrities, writer celebrities, business celebrities, child prodigies… we just love exceptional individuals… we all want to believe in our own exceptionality, or at least live it vicariously through these heroes…

… Antoine Dupont was interviewed after the game and, as is expected, he credited the team… but really, we and the media aren’t interested in the team… just the heroics of Antoine Dupont… never mind that his teammates had a crucial role to play in managing defenders and providing outlets for a pass when he did get swamped by the defense… who imagines themselves as just another member of the team when they get inspired by the valor of one exceptional player?…

… i made a photograph of a tree the other day… it was unusual because it was sending up an extension of its trunk… the extension was naked of leaves until you reached a small feather shaped bunch of them at the top… i thought to myself, “overachiever”… the image stands as a metaphor to me about exceptional individualism…

… the trunk extension looks like loneliness to me… isolated… at risk of being chopped off or snapped by a strong wind… i don’t know if this stem thrusting upward is really in the tree’s best interest… i suppose it could be an advanced sensing unit, like a space telescope… but it could also be a growth anomaly… like cancer, or a would be fascist dictator…

… transgender presentation has put me in a different sort of exceptional category… like the trunk extension of the tree, i am an anomaly… we are a little more than 1% of the population… the population of Beacon, NY, as of the 2020 census, is 13,769… that means there are about 137-8 of us… maybe a few more because Beacon is pretty liberal and welcoming to the LGBTQ+ community… still, we are an anomaly that is uncomfortable to many… there is a strong current in my culture that doesn’t appreciate this sort of trampling of the Marlboro Man/Marilyn Monroe patriarchal paradigm… in addition to being able to manifest my full true self, challenging that paradigm is one of the many things i have been enjoying in my pursuit of gender presentation honesty… it’s my in-your-face gesture to the toxic patriarchy that wants to run rampant over what i like to call the multiarchy…

… when Biden was still running for president, and particularly in the weeks after the debate, before he passed the baton to Kamala Harris… i despaired a Trump victory was immanent… i imagined i would have to return to presenting as masculine… all the women’s clothing i have accumulated in the past year would have to be bagged up and dumped into a clothing drop box… my cosmetics would need to be tossed… i’d have to return to my serviceable uniform of black jeans, t-shirts and turtlenecks… i’d have to let my beard grow to a manly stubble…

… i am feeling more optimistic about things now… enough to start scouring my favorite women’s clothing sites and planning additions to my fall wardrobe…

… last week a neighbor stopped his car as i was walking up the street to my house… he rolled down his window and told me he thought i had really been rocking my outfits lately… he was being supportive of my feminine presentation which has been more in evidence as i gain confidence… just yesterday, when passing two neighborhood women out for a walk, one of them turned to me and said, “your outfits have been very cute lately”… my community is more supportive than i imagined it would be… it would be so much harder if it wasn’t… i may be standing out in a way that not many people in the community do, but i have my team of liberal and opened minded people around me… i am starting to feel less like aberrant top growth, and more like one jubilant branch of a jubilantly multicultural tree… thank you team Beacon!…

… my feminine drift is settling into womanly-man spot… the more i figure out my presentation, the more i think i am not looking to pass as a woman… i have thought about hormone therapy and hair removal by electrolysis, but don’t feel compelled to go there… shaving my face, chest and legs all the time is a little tedious, but i can live with that… i find i like my look the best when it is walking the line between masculine and feminine, but on the feminine side… i love wearing my hair long and down… i love wearing makeup and jewelry… i have built a solid wardrobe of women’s clothing that allows me to play with the yin-yang of masculine feminine in a satisfying way…

… i have some plaid flannel shirts i am trying to figure out what to do with… my wife gave them to me for birthdays and Christmases… i am reluctant to get rid of them because of that… i liked wearing them when she gave them to me… i can’t wear them now… they are like fingernails on a chalkboard to my feminine self… i can’t wear them as a “boyfriend” shirt either… i am not a lithe young woman they can wrap in cozy male comfort… i will put them away… there may come a time when my self-sense will shift back towards masculine space and i will want them… or maybe i will figure out a way to wear them femininely…

… i have been reading the biographies of two trans-women… Lucy Santé and Candy Darling… i haven’t been into biographies much before, but i inhaled Lucy’s and am avidly working my way through Candy’s… it’s not surprising… it’s part of putting myself in context… both stories unfold, at least in part, during the 60s and were directly (Candy’s) or tangentially (Lucy’s) related to the Warhol scene… both very much wanted (Candy) or want (Lucy) to be women… Candy didn’t have the resources for more than hormone therapy… she was fortunate to have very feminine characteristics already… she only had to deal with hair removal… Lucy does have resources and has done everything available other than bottom surgery… both are cases of gender dysphoria… i am envious of women’s breasts, which hormone therapy might give me, along with a more womanly frame, but not so much that i want to mess with my hormones at this late stage in life… i think there is room for an AMAB (assigned male at birth) to pursue feminine presentation without needing to be a woman… i intend to engage the world through feminine sensibilities… i want the world to engage me through those same feminine sensibilities… so i am presenting femininely…

… i have been reading bell hooks… she has become my favorite feminist writer…

… both Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center and All About Love have been a revelation to me… she posits feminism as a way of engaging the world that is not entirely located in the sex of the body… as such, both men and women can embrace and personify feminist values…

… when my mom first learned out about my trans-feminine exploration, i think she was picturing me as a drag queen, an over-the-top caricature of Marilyn Monroe… i assured her that wasn’t the case…

… most of the dresses i have can be read as “tunics” when worn over jeans… tunics are not common male attire, but they are not unheard of male attire… when i wear a dress/tunic over jeans, or leggings for that matter, it allows men and women to read me still as masculine… and that is their general preference as it fits with the western patriarchal world view we are all steeped in… of course, when my nails are colorfully polished, my eyes are shadowed, my lips are painted, and my body is bejeweled, that “out” gets harder to maintain… still, i view myself as a man who wears lipstick, jewelry, eye makeup and dresses… i have a divine she that wants and gets expression…

… the fifth edition of _The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language_ defines effeminate as:

1. Having or showing qualities or characteristics more often associated with females than males; unmanly.
2. Having some characteristics of a woman, as delicacy, luxuriousness, etc.; soft or delicate in an unmanly degree; womanish; weak.
3. Womanlike; womanly; tender; - in a good sense

… i am fine being unmanly or un-Marlboro Man… this perniciously destructive vision of manhood is all too prevalent in the world today, especially in the United States… i am not weak… try being unmistakably a man dressed in women’s clothing walking down the street… there is courage in that… i seek to be womanlike in a good sense… with bell hooks as my feminist sensei, i set out to help all that is feminine subdue the patriarchy… it needs to be subdued… now… in this moment… it needs to be subdued…

I had a brief text conversation with a family member yesterday. My trans-feminine explorations are not sitting well with them. They haven’t exactly disapproved, but it is clear it makes them uncomfortable. I think anything outside the box gender/sexual makes them uncomfortable. They indicated that, as a woman, they aren’t interested in makeup or getting their nails done. They can’t relate to my interest in them as symbols of the feminine. Furthermore, they feel that feminine comes from within. It surprised me that they seemed to lack the very feminine quality of empathy, the ability to see things from another’s perspective. I told them I had strong feminine currents inside me and that the outward expression of feminine through nail polish, lipstick, jewelry, etc. was a way to connect what I feel inside with the outside world and reflect it back to myself.

…

Last week, I attended a literary event featuring Lucy Sante. I bought and have been reading Lucy’s autobiographical account of her transition, which she undertook at age 65. I was 68 when it started to surface that I wanted to present femininely. I am a few months into my 69th year now. She seems to have been more fraught about it than I have been. She also seems to have experienced full-blown gender dysphoria. She is doing hormone therapy. I don’t know anything about the changes that one can expect from hormone therapy, but Lucy looked to me largely like I look to myself. A man presenting femininely.

Hormone therapy, so far, doesn’t appeal to me. My body will have enough challenges coping with getting old. I don’t think adding hormone engineering to the mix would be doing my body any favors, and my psychological health around my feminine emergence is just fine. I am content with feminizing my body with clothing, accessories, makeup, etc. As much as I would like to have woman breasts, and I would, I don’t feel the need to fake them or get surgery. Getting my nails done. Wearing women’s clothing. Wearing lipstick and jewelry. Whatever promotes a feminine impression to the outside world and, most importantly, to myself, is where I am at. Basically, I am a cross dresser. It’s ok if the world sees me as a womanly man and not a woman. Of course, I don’t mind it if anyone wants to acknowledge my womanly presentation with a “mam.”

…

An important realization for my wife in all of this was that, fundamentally, I am still the same person I have always been. Yes, I am presenting femininely. Yes, this exploration has made me a little more feminine on the inside, too. But I have always had feminine inside me and have never presented as anything close to macho masculine.

Lucy Sante talks about coming out to her partner who felt betrayed, lied to. Lucy had been so repressed for so long, that she actually was living a lie and the breakage of trust was a real thing. My wife had a similar reaction initially. I explained to her that I hadn’t been hiding anything from her. That I had shared it with her as soon as I started feeling it. Which was true. In a series of blog posts that turned out to be precursors to the “cracking of my egg,” as the trans community seems to call it, I wrote about what was emerging, though I didn’t realize it when I wrote the posts. I shared all of them with my wife before publishing. I was preparing both of us.

I have, to this day, a collection of beaded purses and hat pins that I developed during my first marriage. My wife carried one of the purses when we got married. She acknowledges there were indications of my feminine nature back then and that was probably part of what she fell in love with. I didn’t present femininely back then. I didn’t present femininely at all until it began to surface last year. So I can truly say to my wife, I didn’t lie or hide anything from you and I started letting you know as soon as I began to know, before I was conscious anything was going on.

Lucy seems to have burst out in a big gush. I am blossoming in a steady flow. Taking careful steps. Testing each new escalation carefully. I am now fully rolled out to family, most friends, and the public. I am pleased about it.

Just now, I read a section in which Lucy talked about dealing with her fascial hair. Laser removal wasn’t available as her beard was gray, and the machine can’t find the gray hairs. She had to do electrolysis, which took a year of weekly sessions in which each individual hair was pulled and the follicle cauterized. That is a kind of dedication and expense that I am not up for.

On my way home from the coffee shop where I was refining and adding to this post, I ran into a friend I haven’t seen in a while. I was in full feminine mode, which they hadn’t seen before. Even a few weeks ago, this encounter would have made me tense. I am much more confident and relaxed now. I opened up the space for him to ask about it by saying it was ok to ask about my feminine presentation. We chatted about various things, and he did circle back to ask me about it. He gave me a hug as we parted.

I have come a long way.

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know

The Clash, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones

My wife is engaged with friends of ours over whether Biden should step aside. She believes Biden should continue to lead the ticket. They are adamant that he needs to step aside. It’s clear that even more intense conversations are going on about this in and around the Biden camp.

There is no question that Biden’s debate performance was an optical disaster. It reminds one of the Kennedy/Nixon debate, which arguably changed the course of the whole election. Biden seemed frail. He had trouble putting his thoughts together and finishing them. Although 45’s talk was a firehose of incoherent, non sequitur lies and disinformation, he appeared strong, vital and focused. Joe Biden, when 45 was speaking, often appeared to be off somewhere else. He appeared senile. In subsequent events both that evening and in the following days, he was apparently State of the Union Joe. What went wrong at the debate for him is difficult to know.

In his defense, he had a cold, and I am not sure how anyone stands up to the firehose stream of lies 45 spews. Probably better not to debate at all. Which begs the question. The Biden camp wanted the debate and made the challenge. They agreed to the terms and staging of it. How were they so clueless about how hard it would be to match up with 45 under those conditions? A part of me speculates that they need him to realize he can’t carry the torch anymore and should step aside, so they set him up for humiliation. I know that’s far-fetched, and it would be beyond cruel, but I am trying to make sense of the debacle.

Everyone who understands the stakes of this election and wants to preserve democracy is reeling in fear and painful anguish. We are all kinds of emotions all at once, and none of them are good. Cup of panic anyone?

I suppose the one silver lining in all of this is that the debate is very early, there is lots of time to recover before the election. An eternity in political time. Unfortunately, there are some choice clips of Biden stumbling that are sure to find their way into attack commercials in September and October. Maybe they already have.

Supposedly there was a second debate agreed to in September. That’s a hard one for the Biden camp. If they back out, it will be an acknowledgement that Biden isn’t up to it. If they go through with it, well, another performance like the one we witnessed this past week would absolutely be the death of democracy.

There will be lots of polling and lots more rollercoaster emotions in the next week. I wonder if the needle will move much at all. I think a considerable number of us know the stakes of this election and, while we wish we had a younger, more charismatic candidate, it really makes no difference who the candidate is. We are going to do what we have to do to preserve the chance to have a better choice next time around. We know this election is existential for the country.

There are reasons to like the Biden administration and reasons to dislike and be angry with it. But it all pales to insignificance when you consider the alternative, which is 45 and white supremecist, patriarchal, Christian Nationalism as far as the eye can see.

It doesn’t matter who is at the top of the democratic ticket. Change or don’t change. Democracy is at stake and the only party willing to try to save it is the Democratic Party. And I can’t see waisting energy arguing about it unless you actually are in a position to affect the decision. We all need to work on getting anyone who doesn’t understand the moment we are in to understand it. Then we need to join them in supporting whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be in November.

… i continue to grow my feminine out into the world… my rollout has been measured… i think carefully about each step and work out half steps if any step seems too scary… each step is marked by a question, “do i have the courage to do this?”

… last weekend i came out to my family… i had been thinking about it for a while… waiting for the right moment… i sent them a link to a post i wrote in January of this year, saying i had been going through some changes and i’d been wanting to share it with them for a while… they all read it… they were pretty cool with it… i talked with my mom about it the other day… it turned out she was imagining me as a drag queen… i had a good chuckle about that… “no mom, it’s not like that… in fact, i wore a sweater dress the last time i visited… just add lipstick and some jewelry to that memory”…

… becoming a person who expresses themselves differently from most of the people around me is fraught with fear of rejection… i am aware that there are places i probably shouldn’t go in full feminine bloom… i choose carefully when and where to present my femininity… i am finding acceptance for the most part… people i know are curious, i can tell by the way they look at me when they see me in feminine mode for the first time… they are reluctant to ask me about it… they don’t realize i want to be asked, so i have decided to state the obvious so we can talk about it…

… the other day, my wife and i went shopping for cosmetics at Sephora… i wanted to start experimenting with eye shadow and she wanted to find a new blush and lipstick… i suggested the joint adventure… she was all in… i know it can be weird for her sometimes… but she has been way more supportive than i have any right to expect…

… as with each of my steps forward into feminine presentation, i will start subtilely with the eyeshadow… i wore it for the first time the day after i bought it… i barely noticed it when i looked in a mirror… i doubt anyone else did either… i will slowly work up to bolder shadow statements… i am hot to try shiny metallic shadows… Shye, the saleswoman who indulged and educated me at Sephora, showed me a wonderful color pallet from Danessa Myricks… it’s on my want list… but first, the basics…

… the day i started writing this i wore a black linen mini dress from Everlane… it stops a few inches above my knees… for the first time i wore no leggings underneath… leggings, even though worn mostly by women, give the left brains of people who see me an out… “oh, he’s wearing a long shirt and pants”… a mini dress and bare legs is impossible to construe as a pant and shirt combination… in the brutally hot weather we’ve been experiencing, my minidress outfit was soooo comfortable… and can i say, i have very good legs?…

… each escalation of my feminine presentation is planned carefully… i have to imagine it in detail for days… until it becomes so much a part of who i am that i have to do it…

… i was nervous walking down Main Street in my minidress with bare legs… especially when i passed men… i am anxious when i pass men in a way i never was before… most mornings i pass the entry to a martial arts studio… often, there are a number of pickup trucks parked on the street outside… samurai war lords loiter on the sidewalk after class yakking… i haven’t walked past them in full feminine bloom… i think i will avoid that…

… it is strange to be so anxious about what men might do… i fear their potential to be violent… women, i think many of you know this anxiety well…

… i have had a couple of close calls with cars at a particular intersection… both involved male drivers… one was definitely being aggressive… the other… hard to know… It’s not impossible that it was distracted driving…

… the other night my wife and i met a friend at an event featuring Lucy Sante… Lucy transitioned to feminine presentation late in life, as i have… in fact, we are about the same age and her transition happened only a few years ago… during the event, she described true gender dysphoria which she had been experiencing since childhood… i have been aware of the strong feminine currents of my being for a long time… i have always been comfortable with them, though i don’t think they ever rose to the level of true gender dysphoria…

… at the end of the program i walked up to Lucy and told her i was in the process of finding my feminine and that it helped me to see another trans woman who has undertaken a similar journey… i thanked her for being public and frank about that experience… she thanked me and wished me luck with my journey… i bought her book and look forward to reading it…

I have been thinking a lot about what it is I am becoming. It seems more and more that it is less about becoming a she, than a feminine he. When I think of myself in the third person, I think of myself as he. He is wearing lipstick. He is buying necklaces and wearing them. He is buying dresses and wearing them. He is wearing colors more often associated with she. My longings sometimes run to being a woman. Like when I see a beautiful dress that would require having breasts, hips, and a waist to wear, but mostly I am he in my mind. At least for now. I continue to evolve.

The women’s clothing I wear is feminine, even when I wear it. But it is almost unisex because whether I wear it or a woman wears it, it has substantially the same drape. I have a cotton shirt dress which is really an oversized, overlong, crewneck cotton shirt. It fits loosely on my body, as it would on a woman’s. It is really comfortable. Of course, on a woman it hangs differently, off the breasts for example. But when I wear it, I don’t need breasts to get a good hang.

The gender implications of clothing, jewelry and makeup are interesting. The culturally defined messaging of various forms of dress and adornment are just that, culturally defined. As are the expectations of what gender message one is to send with their clothing and adornment. In the United States, we are steeped in a myth of masculinity and femininity represented by the Marlboro Man and Marilyn Monroe archetypes. It’s an extreme and, let’s face it, toxic masculinity and femininity. In reality, we play out in a much more diverse way. But the basic myth of what man and woman should be remains Marlboro Man and Marilyn Monroe.

As I have said before, I am not the Marlboro Man. I have never been and have no desire to be. I prefer feminine to masculine, in my expression of self, in the things I am happy doing and in the people I surround myself with. I don’t seek to be a woman, so much as I seek to be a womanly man. Of course, in toxically masculine/feminine society, this is a display of extreme weakness by a man. It is the incomprehensible-to-some preference of emulating the femininity of Marilyn Monroe instead of possessing and fucking it. I love smashing the patriarchy!

Last night was my friend’s birthday party. I went with my wife in full feminine mode. As I wrote last week, I was both excited and anxious about this party. Even though I have been presenting my feminine self for eight months now, it was the first time we have socialized with our friends with me in full feminine mode. I wasn’t sure how this would be for my wife or how it would be received by heterosexual friends. I think my wife might have been a little anxious too. We quickly relaxed once there. I came home feeling it had been a successful evening, and my wife said she thought so too.

The photo above was my look for the evening, though I did change my lipstick to something more subtle and peachy. My garment is a black cotton shirtdress. I also wore dark gray leggings, black leather sandals from Banana Republic, a buffalo horn bracelet on my left wrist and a guitar string bracelet on my right wrist.

I chose this party for coming out to a larger circle of friends and acquaintances because my friend is lesbian. I figured the crowd would be a mixture of straight, gay, and lesbian people. That is, it would be a friendly audience. I also expected there would be a few people that we have socialized with over the years, before I began presenting femininely or even knew I wanted to. I was right. A woman my wife regularly goes to the gym with was there. She was the first person I talked to at any length. She took feminine me in stride. If she missed a beat, I didn’t see it. I was glad she was there. Last fall, when my feminine presenting self began emerging, my wife told me she had no one she could talk to about it. Hopefully, my wife now has at least one friend in on my changes and can talk to her about it.

A heterosexual couple we have known for some time came too. I spent a good amount of time talking to the husband, and my wife did the same with his wife. They didn’t miss a beat either.

A woman artist friend rounded out the people we saw who knew me in the pre trans feminine days and hadn’t seen me present femininely before. Several years ago, she and her husband divorced. At a party about a year ago, she showed up with a new girlfriend and last night she told us they were getting married.

At the end of the night, my artist friend’s fiancé and I had a conversation about an article I had read that morning making the case for lesbian separatism. It suggested it was good for lesbians to form lesbian only communities, separate from the dominant, hetero-patriarchal society, to be in a safe place free of its oppression and thus be unfettered in establishing their lesbian identity. We mutually agreed that we preferred the stance of being who we are within the context of the dominant culture as a means of holding space for that self. I certainly have no desire to spend my time only with other trans-feminine people. I have carefully and deliberately been weaving my feminine self into my community with the hope that I will be embraced, appreciated and loved for who I am. I also want to exist as a demonstration that there are other ways of configuring one’s self. I intend to help smash the patriarchy.

As we were leaving, my artist friend’s fiancé asked me what I planned to do for pride month. I told her I hadn’t thought about it, but that now I would. It was only a little while ago that I came home and realized that the pride flag we have been flying for years supporting the LGBTQ+ community was now flying for me as well. I’m not sure if I can join a parade yet. I am still a work in progress and still rolling it out to my friends and acquaintances. But I will find a way to quietly celebrate my entry into this community and to honor those who came before me and created the space for this new me to be.

PS: I have decided two things to do in celebration of Pride Month. I want to bake some sort of pride cake and have some friends over to help me eat it. And, I would like to come completely out to my family, which is my Mother, my brother and my sister at this point. I don’t think it will come as a total shock to them. On my last couple of visits, I have worn “sweater tunics,” aka sweater dresses, and other casual tops purchased from women’s clothing sources, as well as wearing my hair in more feminine ways. There has also been an essay or two shared with them which certainly pointed at it.

When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and steps into it.

–Meister Eckhart

There couldn’t be a more perfect quote to describe what has become a daily routine.

Every morning I shave to something approaching feminine smooth, spread moisturizing cream across my face, select clothing, jewelry, hair accessories and lipstick. When I am satisfied with my look, I sit at my studio desk and search for images of women on Mastodon, Deviant Art and Fashion websites. Fashion images, makeup images, portrait images, erotic images. I install these images on the daily page of my journal in a Feminine Mystique section set up to receive them, my virtual alter to the Divine Feminine. I take a few selfies and save my look to the journal too. Here is my look the day I started writing this post…

Here’s a grid of recent looks…

I spend hours scouring online catalogs of women’s clothing for feminine looks I can emulate and women’s clothing I can wear. I am getting good at knowing what will look good on me and what won’t. Here are some dresses I am currently considering…

A dramatic statement, I know, but I love it and I think my large frame would be able to cary it off.

This has been on my list for a while. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but may soon.

I like the bold print here.

This one may be a little too “girly” for me.

This one might be a little too slouchy, but then again, maybe not. It has a subtle weave texture pattern that I like.

When new clothing arrives, I test drive my outfits at my favorite local coffee shop, where the baristas are young, hip and tolerant. One of the managers spotted my transition early on and has been very supportive. She usually has something positive to say about my look for the day. We compare notes on fashion, accessories and hair styles sometimes.

I began my feminine self rollout late last fall, under the cover of early morning darkness and cold weather coats. My initial steps were tentative. I wore the most feminine item of clothing I had, a cardigan sweater that was minidress length, over slim leg jeans. The lipstick I started wearing was almost the same color as my lips, easily missed.

It is spring now. Dawn comes earlier and earlier. There is no more cover of darkness. Soon I won’t need the knee length, light weight coat i have been wearing. Whatever I have chosen to wear for the day will be fully visible from a distance. I have been wearing some dresses that will be provocative to people I regularly see in the morning, or so I imagine. I prepare for this by imagining myself walking confidently down the street in all my feminine glory.

By the time I cross over a new threshold in presenting myself, I have been picturing it for months. Buying a new item of clothing is the result of hours of browsing online catalogs. I bookmark items I think I can wear, get my wife’s opinion on them, return to look at them some more. As I zero in on favorites, I imagine how I will accessorize them. Then the moment of placing my order comes. Waiting for a new dress or blouse or pair of leggings to come can be a little excruciating. When it finally arrives I immediately try it on to see if it works as well on my body as I thought it would. I try it with various accessories I have on hand. Which jewelry? What hair look? What color lipstick?

As warm weather approaches, I picture myself walking down the street in carefully assembled outfits. Wont I be beautiful! This is scary and exhilarating, as all my coming out steps have been.

Expanding the circle of friends and acquaintances who know about my feminine turn is slow going. I have to overcome my own fears of rejection and my wife needs time to acclimate herself to my changes. If I progress too fast it can freak her out, though she has coped much better than I feared she would. She now helps me shop for jewelry and reviews clothing I am considering purchasing with me.

A friend has invited us to her birthday party. She has been very supportive of my feminine turn. I told my wife that I want to attend the party in full feminine mode. A dress, jewelry and lipstick. Maybe eye shadow and mascara. There will be straight friends in attendance whom we have known for years. It will be my first coming out to that circle of friends. I tingle with the thought of it. I worry too. I worry that not everyone will be ok with this new me. I worry that my wife will feel embarrassed in front of long time friends. Still, I want feminine me to be known, loved and appreciated.

I have been in a creative funk; unable to write compellingly; unable to focus on moving photographic work forward. My “Feminine Mystique” project, which at the beginning of the year I imagined myself deeply engaged with by now, is creeping along at the proverbial snail’s pace. I have felt that I am pressing against cosmic headwinds to do anything at all.

Except…

I have been working very hard at reinventing my look. Last year I began exploring a feminine space. I did a lot of writing about it. As fall began coloring the landscape in yellows, oranges and reds, I began coloring my lips in natural and coppery pink, wearing my hair down with 60’s style headbands, wearing my nails longer and pulling tunic like garments out of my closet that I hadn’t worn in ages because they connected my outward appearance with the intense feminine I was feeling inside.

I have always had a strong feminine side, though I did not manifest it much outwardly. For a long time I have preferred the company of women more than most men I meet. And when I say I prefer the company of women to men, it is not only about sexual attraction. I identify with them more deeply than I do men. I like cooking, keeping the house, talking about the things women talk about. I don’t watch sports, I am not interested in fast cars, I have no desire to be a corporate titan, or a corporate anything at all. I don’t play golf, tennis or racquet ball. I do yoga. I have always operated at the fringes of what is normal for my sex and generation, making forays into alternative ways of conceiving myself and then scurrying back to the outer boundaries of normalcy.

In place of the creative projects I envisioned at the start of the year, I am spending a ton of time on women’s clothing sites looking for women’s clothing I can wear. I purchased my first sweater dress from Poetry in early December and it looks great on me. People have been complimentary. I wear it mostly over black slimline jeans. In that configuration it presents more as a tunic than a dress. I have also worn it with tights. In that configuration it presents very much as a dress. I have purchased some colorful knit tops and a couple of statement necklaces. I get compliments on these too when I wear them.

For the past few weeks I have been focusing on my spring wardrobe. The goal is to present in a feminine way without looking ridiculous or pathetic. To walk a fashion line that swings back and forth between feminine and masculine. I ordered a pencil skirt to see how such a skirt would fit on me and discovered that I might not be able to do pencil skirts which might also nix some of the denim sheath skirts I was lusting after. So now I am focusing on tunics and leggings, shirt and sweater dresses, and A line skirts. I have started looking for tops to go with the skirts. I am very enthusiastically putting time and resources into my look, which I have never done before.

It finally occurred to me that my creative project is what I am putting my time and resources into, and right now, that is myself. I am a caterpillar that has spun its transformation cocoon and is busy reinventing itself. What kind of butterfly or moth will I become? I am spending most of my time and a lot of my money, as well as psychological and emotional energy into revisioning my outward appearance. My artwork is me. Until I figure out my inward/outward self, I won’t be able to make art or write much. But when I have this transformation firmly in hand and have rolled it out to public spaces, I have no doubt that I will start making art around it.

This is a complex undertaking in which I continually feel I am risking things. I am risking people’s respect (am I doing this in a dignified way or in a way that makes me seem ridiculous?). I am risking the stability of my friendships (who among my friends will understand and who will distance themselves from me?). I am risking the stability of my marriage (How much change and how fast can our relationship handle?).

I am excited and scared. I also feel gratitude that at the age of 68 going on 69 I am able to reinvent myself like this. It is a beautiful gift to my aliveness.

Whatever calls you, whether it’s the ocean or art or family or democracy, isn’t out there. It’s inside you. Like all the cycles and rhythms we describe in this book, it comes and goes, accelerates and decelerates, falls away and rises again. Like a tide, inside you.

— from Burnout, by Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski

I am assembling an outfit to express feminine me. I am building it around a lovely “Petrol/Teal” funnel neck sweater dress. I have spent hours on the internet shopping for accessories to go with it. The right shoes, the right leggings, the right pair of socks, the right bracelet. Masculine me settled on a basic uniform years ago. Black crewneck long sleeve t-shirt, black slim leg jeans, Hoka sneakers, black leather belt with silver buckle, grey or black over the calf socks. Masculine me isn’t into makeup and is happy with a five day stubble.

Feminine me is tossing masculine me’s uniform aside. Boring! She has brought purple, magenta, blue/green, and blue into the mix. Her preferred clothing purveyors are J. Jill and Poetry. She likes contemplating questions like, what color lipstick looks good on me? Should I get purple highlights in my hair? Should I get my brows done? What sort of eye makeup should I wear? She reads articles on hair styles, makeup tips, facial cleansing and moisturizing routines. Masculine me doesn’t seem threatened by this development. He seems, if anything, a bit amused, and quite willing to sit on the bench while feminine me blossoms, though he’s prepared to step forward if circumstances warrant it.

This makes it sound like I have split in two. That’s not how it is. My masculine and feminine are a continuum. They coexist in a yin-yang sort of way, moving to the front and back again in a fluid dance of gender expression.

It is hard to describe the feeling of letting my feminine flower. It is often intense. When I first started wearing lipstick. When I first wore a dress. When I first did these things in public. Each of these moments came with feelings that washed through me, sometimes as a gentle wave, sometimes in a raging torrent. Do you remember how it feels to fall in love? That’s how it’s feeling to me to get my feminine on. It’s scary too. I know some people won’t understand.

It is tempting to view this as “coming out of the closet,” but I haven’t been in a closet in any kind of difficult or conflicted way. It’s just that sometime during the past year, feminine me started asking for more space to be. In my mind. On my body. Amongst my community. I am lucky to have the luxury of giving her that space.

In retrospect, I can see she has been with me from the beginning. Michael, until the 1990’s, could be a boy or girl’s name. That means that from the day I was born, room was made for feminine me, in my name. I have always been Michael, never Mike. Mike is the Marlboro man as far as I am concerned. I have never wanted to be the Marlboro man. Perhaps the death of my father, an overbearing patriarchal figure, set her free. Perhaps being at a stage of life where I don’t really have to care what people think helped too. Perhaps, even, she sees that now is the political moment to smash the patriarchy.

I don’t know where feminine me is taking us. All I know is that she is presently at the wheel and determined to immerse us in the feminine.

This post starts with a quote from the book Burnout. It was revelatory to me when I read it. It helped me realize that my meaning-core is calling me to a hero’s journey to the divine feminine. I will read about her. I will write about her. I will make art about her. I will express her. Connecting with her will be the touchstone of my being for a while.

Joseph Campbell claimed that women had no need to undertake the hero’s journey because they were already in the place where that journey winds up. This seems to me to be a conflation of biology and gender, as well as a failure to understand the masculine-feminine continuum. The hero, Marlboro Man, and the divine feminine, Marilyn Monroe, are the yin and yang of Western Civilization. The divine feminine is not the goal of all hero’s journeys. And I believe that women often have need to undertake the Hero’s journey which may return them to the divine feminine or not. All men and women are capable of being the hero or the divine feminine. We need more women undertaking hero’s journeys and many more men connecting with the feminine divine.

May the divine feminine receive us all warmly and shepherd our growth. May we be among her many beacons of light to a world so desperately in need of her.

I was going through my files, cleaning things up, and found this piece I wrote back in 2001 in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack. It holds up pretty well as a representation of my Humanist thinking. I thought I would share it with you as a way to get my writing started up again.

During the first few weeks following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, I received hundreds of emails from friends, internet friends, and relatives. Among these messages were the frequent forwarding of thoughts, penned by others, that my mail connections thought I might find useful. Not unexpectedly, some of my connections believe in a God. One of them forwarded an email, author unknown, which they found comforting. The email started out this way:

I had a very dear friend question my faith in God right after the terrorist attack on America. Her question was simply put, “Where is your God today?”

She was very hurt, as all Americans were, so I tried not to react defensively. Since that moment, I have prayed and grieved over the disastrous events. However, I believe I have the answer. I know where my God was the morning of September 11, 2001!

He was busy!!

The note went on to describe the many things God was busy doing that day. According to the note, that many individuals were supposed to have boarded the four jets that would later be used in the attacks, but didn’t. Others were supposed to have been at wrk in the trade towers, but weren’t, having been delayed for one reason or another. Apparently, an act of divine will also held the mortally wounded towers up for an hour, allowing thousands to escape.

This note struck me. I saved it, as I did all messages related to the terrorist attack. I would find it difficult to defend my faith this way. I feel badly for everyone whose faith has been so severely challenged by the events of the past few months, that they are compelled to offer explanations like this one. Whether this particular defense of faith is a good one is not really the issue for me. I don’t share the author’s belief in God, so I don’t have to search for a better defense of faith. Even so, I can’t walk away feeling smug about my Humanist faith, which doesn’t have to contort itself in this way. In the aftermath of the events of September 11, anyone with faith of any kind has to ask and honestly answer this question:

Does my faith stand up?

A family member and I have been exchanging somewhat heated emails about patriotism. They find it difficult to understand how I can question my government’s role in creating a world situation that could make such acts of hostility a possibility. They find it difficult to accept my conviction that conflicts of any kind are rarely black and white in the rightness and wrongness of any side. I find it challenging to understand their unquestioning rally to the flag. It explains a little to know that this family member served in the armed forces and came of age during, and in the aftermath of, the Second World War. It explains a little to know that I came of age during and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and that I never served in the military.

At one point during those exchanges, I wrote something like the following:

I would have to believe there are many forms of patriotism. I have never been, and never will be, the “my country right or wrong” type. I recognize the incredible gift I have been given in being born in this country. I am proud of many of the things my country has accomplished. But I also recognize that blind, unquestioning love is not a good thing. Beyond city, beyond country, more than anything, I love people, most especially when they are at their finest. I love the police officers, firemen, and ordinary citizens who rushed to the aid of fellow human beings in the towers, many of whom lost their lives. I have a special place in my heart for Mayor Giuliani, who, more than any other public figure, rose to the occasion and let his people when they needed it most.

There was more, but I think you begin to get the point.

My love for people is not blind. I know that people are capable of both the best and the worst, a fact that has been profoundly confirmed by the events of September 11. But the core of my Humanist faith is that as horrible and misguided as the motives and actions of some can be, people, even sometimes those same horrible and misguided people, can be equally, and even surpassingly, good.

No deeply and honestly held faith is easy. World events continually challenge and force the reevaluation of every faith. Hard questions get asked. Humanists are spared the defense of a higher, all powerful, all knowing, supernatural being, whose actions, or failures to act, bring about such misery. But there are questions we must answer, too. If we believe in the worth and dignity of every human being, how do we reconcile this belief with the liked of Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden? Would it ever be possible to act to elicit the best in them and ourselves? What should be our response to a Nation State that harbors and protects terrorists, allowing them, even encouraging them, to assault the innocent around the world? The answer in general terms is clear. The specifics can be troublesome. The answer is that we must respect whatever worth and dignity we find in others and ourselves, and act to preserve and enhance it. When we cannot readily identify worth and dignity in others, we at least have to act to preserve that which exists in ourselves. This applies to individuals, communities, and nations alike.

There was a news item about some youths, who in the days following the September 11 attacks, stormed into the restaurant of a man they deemed to be the enemy by proxy because of his Middle Eastern descent. They tore the place apart. The police caught the young men that same evening, but when asked to press charges, the restaurant owner declined. He couldn’t see how it would make things any better. A few hours later, the young men returned, apologized, and spent the night helping him to clean up the damage they had down. The owner clearly acted in a way that brought the best out in others.

There are times when there are no viable alternatives to a forceful, even violent response. An assault on our person, where the attacker means to do us bodily harm, must be met with a vigorous physical defense if retreat is not possible or would only invite further brutality at a later date. We are, at times, compelled to do harm before there is any chance of doing good. Our faith demands, however, that we understand when a forceful response is justified, and know that the good we can accomplish eventually is worth the bad we inevitably bring about in the short term. Humanists make it their business to act out of broad concern for humanity, rather than rage over any offense perpetrated against our community or ourselves. Humanist faith demands it.

Human beings are anything and everything but perfect. They are good and evil, right and wrong, lovable and hateful. They agree and disagree, fight and make up, make war and make peace. The only rational way I can handle this is through a humanist faith. I work hard to fulfill my own promise. I do my best to behave towards others in such a way that I demonstrate respect for their worth and dignity, and encourage, or at least not discourage or prevent, the fulfillment of their potential.

Humanists place their faith and optimism in the demonstrated capacity of people to do remarkable, even wonderful things. We believe in the worth and dignity of all living beings and seek to respect it. Our conviction is that we must conduct ourselves and the business of our institutions in such a way that we bring out the best in all.