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…

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)

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…

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.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.¹

Half a world away, war has broken out between Israel and the Palestinians. We have Palestinian friends. They were happy when news of the Hamas attack reached them. One of those friends was in Gaza at the time. They have since gotten out.

I look at my Instagram feed and my Palestinian friends are strident about the suffering inflicted by the Israelis on the Palestinians. That suffering is their justification for the horrific violence the Palestinians inflicted on the Israelis. I believe Palestinians have suffered. I believe Israel has often treated them brutally, though I know less about it than I should. I also believe Hamas punished civilians for the sins of the state in a horrifically brutal way. If we are to believe the news reports, babies were shot, beheaded, burned. Women were raped. Children were killed while their parents watched. Parents were killed while their children watched. It is hard to know what is true and what isn’t, but some part of it is likely the truth. My Palestinian friends may have cause to be angry, but I can’t see how the violence Hamas perpetrated on the Israeli people can be justified.

(For example, the situation in Israel and Palestine) was an absolutely impossible way to try to make reparations for the Holocaust, right? I mean, this idea that after the near annihilation of the Jews in Europe, it’s any kind of solution to push Palestinians off their land … It’s a project that has been violent from the beginning, and it didn’t address the underlying causes of the genocide in Europe. It just displaced them. So we’ve been in this dance of denial and disavowal ever since, and now it is reaching its most violent apotheosis as we speak. —Naomi Klein²

The anger between Israel and its Arab neighbors, I learn, goes back to the late 1800s, early 1900s, and was exacerbated by the creation of Israel following World War II. To establish the state, Jewish people claimed dominion over land they had not occupied in large numbers for 2,000 years and inhabited primarily by Arabs for the last 1,500 years. It reminds me of the Native American story, and the stories of Indigenous peoples all over the planet, displaced by more resourced and technologically advanced peoples.

My wife shared an article that explains why there is conflict and why that conflict was inevitable. Here are some quotes from it:

Given the urgency of their situation, it is understandable that the Jews were not concerned with the response of the Palestinian Arabs to their project. After a tragically failed attempt to identify spiritually, emotionally or intellectually with the cultures and nations within which they resided, the Jews learned the hard way that the modern world was increasingly defining self-determination in exclusionist, not liberal, terms. The pogroms and persecution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did even more to shape the tenor and nature of the Zionist movement than the brutality of the Holocaust; it was that predicament which gave birth to what might be called “The Original Never Again” — the determination on the part of the Jews never again to be supplicants, dependent on the kindness of strangers, or feeble bystanders to their own persecution, waiting pitifully for the world to evolve beyond prejudice. Influenced by the character and tenor of nationalism as it evolved in Europe, where blood and soil were the hallmarks of legitimate belonging, the Zionists had concluded that they could only overcome their outsider status by settling in Palestine — a land where their “insider” status could be unearthed, and their physical and spiritual links with the past revealed.³

And this…

The Palestinian Arabs said No to the idea that in the 20th century a people who last lived in Palestine in large numbers over 2000 years ago could claim, on the basis of a religious text, rights to the land where the current inhabitants had been living for a millennium and a half.⁴

Israel is set to launch a ground offensive in Gaza. The objective will be to exterminate Hamas. Civilians are already dying in daily areal bombardments.

The quote I began this post with comes from Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is relentlessly brutal. Horrific things happen on almost every page. A band of men travel together hunting Indians and brutally killing them when they find them. They do a lot of killing along the way. There is no love in the book. It’s all about mankind’s endless capacity for violence. I am not done with it. I keep hoping for some positive resolution to the story. Some lesson to be learned. Some wisdom about finding the better angels of our nature. I don’t think McCarthy believes that humankind is anything but a brutally violent species.

Palestinian artist Heba Zagout was killed with her two young children in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza on Friday, October 13, her sister confirmed on Facebook.%20The%2039-year-old%20artist’s%20death%20was%20also%20reported%20by%20the%20Palestinian%20publication%20Arabs48.⁵

I am fortunate. I was born in the United States to an upper middle-class family. I have known little physical violence in my life. I have almost always lived in relatively safe places. I am a six-foot tall white male. It could only have been better for me if I were blonde and my family upper class. I have no reason to complain or think that war is the base condition of humankind. War has always been a distant calamity for me, only experienced through the news and movies.

The news we watch, MSNBC mostly, makes the case for Israel’s right to defend itself, and therefore, invade Gaza, ostensibly to eliminate the threat of Hamas. I heard a commentator say they would get a few years of peace out of it before Hamas regrew and rearmed itself, or some other organization took its place.

There will be no winner of this conflict. Only losers. The cycle of violence looks set to continue without end. Cormac McCarthy could have written a novel about this conflict. McCarthy’s Southwest seems as desolate and inhospitable as the land in contention between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The violence seems just as brutal, mindless, and pointless.

My wife cried when the news of the Hamas attack first broke. I struggle to get emotionally worked up about something happening at such a distance. The invasion of Ukraine had a bigger impact on me, but it was through fear. I could imagine the Ukraine war leading to nuclear armageddon. I think it still could. I am not as fearful about this one, but maybe I should be. There is so much to be sad about these days. We live in the universe of Cormac McCarthy.

I have felt disappointed in my Palestinian friends for being happy and defiant in the face of such horror. They will tell me that, like John Snow, I know nothing. It’s true, I know nothing about their pain, and the pain of their families, and the pain of their people. I only know there is pain on the Israeli side too. How do I weigh the pain of these two sides against one another? Pain is pain.

We were at a memorial service for a family friend who died a few months back. During a period of stories and remembrances, a man got up and said he had lived next door to P for a number of years; that they often had coffee in the morning or a beer in the afternoon, and would talk about many things; that in his professional life he developed AI; that he and P would have extended conversations about AI. P had been a journalist, published in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Life magazine and other publications. P, of course, felt AI would never be able to write as well as a good human writer. It lacked experience of the world. P knew about experience with the world. He traveled extensively, was an expert spear fisherman, and quite the lady’s man. He wrote from his experiences. He wrote well. How could AI match that without his direct experience of the cosmos?

After the memorial service, my 92 year old mother-in-law asked me what I thought about AI. I told her that AI is here to stay; that it will get better at making human beings feel; that I wondered what the place of humanity would become in relation to it.

Much of the criticism of AI centers on the human experience which AI will never have. Because it will never have that experience, it will never be able to create as well as the best writers or artists or musicians.

When the essay, called “Ghosts,” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021, it quickly went viral. I started hearing from others who had lost loved ones and felt that the piece captured grief better than anything they’d ever read. I waited for the backlash, expecting people to criticize the publication of an AI-assisted piece of writing. It never came. Instead the essay was adapted for This American Life and anthologized in Best American Essays. It was better received, by far, than anything else I’d ever written.¹

In Confessions of a Viral AI Writer, Vauhini Vara writes about the experience of having an essay written with the assistance of AI go viral. She talks about her ambivalence about having sought assistance from AI to write an essay about the death of her sister at a young age. She tells us that she has decided not to use AI for anything more than research going forward.

I don’t know where, in the pantheon of writers and journalists, Ms. Vara falls. Her Wired article seemed well enough written. In the viral AI-assisted article, AI provided her with the description of a moment between her and her dying sister that, as she described it, was pivotal to the essay. It also wasn’t something that had actually happened between them. Poetic license I suppose. You tell a little bit of a lie because it gets at a bigger truth, or a fuller emotion, which certainly was there. Would she have come up with this line herself, or would her knowledge of what did and didn’t happen between her and her sister have made that difficult? AI didn’t have that knowledge and was free to indulge in a plausible fantasy for the situation.

Ms. Vara writes in her essay that,

… writing is an attempt to clarify what the world is like from where I stand in it.

If writing is my attempt to clarify what the world is like for me, the problem with AI is not just that it can’t come up with an individual perspective on the world. It’s that it can’t even comprehend what the world is.²

This, I think, is the core truth of the matter. Writing, is how writers understand themselves in relation to the cosmos, and good writing helps fellow travelers locate themselves within that cosmos. Since civilization became a thing, we have been understanding and locating ourselves through story telling, which requires human to human connection. Story teller to story listener. Writer to reader. Whether it be an oral tradition, scrawling on papyrus, or keyboarding collections of ones and zeros into the cloud, it is a chain of relationship, of connection.

If we retain AI to write for us, how are we gaining that understanding of self and world? How are we weaving humanity together?

But what if I, the writer, don’t matter? I joined a Slack channel for people using Sudowrite³ and scrolled through the comments. One caught my eye, posted by a mother who didn’t like the bookstore options for stories to read to her little boy. She was using the product to compose her own adventure tale for him. Maybe, I realized, these products that are supposedly built for writers will actually be of more use to readers? ⁴

The corporate capitalist drive to mechanize everything humans can do devalues what it means to be human. To be removed from craft is to be removed from our humanity. In his essay, _Buddhist Economics,_E. F. Schumacher distinguished between machines that assist the craftsman, and machines that take over the work of the craftsman through this quote of Ananda Coomaraswamy,

“The craftsman himself, can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.”⁵

Machines as destroyers of culture. That’s a powerful image. Large language models (LLMs) are capable of being either the carpet loom, or the power loom. That is, they can assist the writer with her writing, or they can do the writing themselves.

In Buddhist Economics, E. F. Schumacher identifies two different approaches to work. The capitalist economics approach, and the Buddhist economics approach. About the capitalist economics approach he had this to say…

There is universal agreement that a fundamental source of wealth is human labour. Now, the modern economist has been brought up to consider “labour” or work as little more than a necessary evil. From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it can not be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a “disutility”; to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice. Hence the ideal from the point of view of the employer is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment.⁶

and this to say about a Buddhist concept of work…

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.

There is, then, a distinction to be made about the use of AI. Do we use it to take human beings out of the labor equation, or, do we use it to assist us with the work of being human? It is the difference between a capitalist view of labor and a Buddhist view of labor. I know which I prefer.

This past weekend I was on my own, so I spent some time watching films billed as having sexually explicit scenes in them, which I found in articles like this one. I love watching movies with well-crafted sex scenes and will seek films using that as my first screening criteria. When I have a list to work with, I identify the plots that are most appealing, then look up what the critics say about them. I like well reviewed films because, well, good sex scenes need good story telling to develop the relationship and chemistry between the characters. The moment of consummation is much more compelling in the context of a well developed story. My wife is less interested in sexually explicit as a criterion, though she doesn’t mind sexual explicitness if it is natural to the context of a well told story. So, when I am on my own, I explore the sexually explicit film territory and, if I find one I think she will like, I recommend that we watch it together.

Of the films I watched, the four that stood out were, Portrait of a Lady On Fire, Elisa & Marcella¹, Anaïs In Love, and Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. All were well-crafted and enjoyable films with good sex scenes. Portrait Of and Good Luck were exceptional.

Good Luck, while not being that explicit in imagery, was pretty explicit about the subject of sex and how uptight we can be about sexual pleasure for its own sake. I thought it dealt with its subject material in an admirably nuanced way. The film centers on the relationship between Leo Grande, a sex worker, and Nancy Stokes, a retired and recently widowed client who has never had an orgasm.

Upon Leo’s arrival, Nancy begins nattering — a lot. She has cause to: She’s a retired schoolteacher and widow; and she’s never done anything remotely like this. And by “this” we mean take her own pleasure seriously.²

The movie is, as one critic put it, “sex positive.” It contends that there is nothing wrong with seeking and giving sexual pleasure. It is also sex work positive. Assumptions about sex workers, set up in part by second-wave feminism, are challenged. That they are drug addicts, traumatized in some way, have no other choices, are abused and abusing themselves, are exploited. It must be acknowledged that all of these things are true for some percentage of sex workers. But, it doesn’t have to be, and isn’t always, that way. In Good Luck, we are presented with a character for whom it is made clear that, while he has a childhood trauma important to the story, sex work was a positive life choice. This, apparently, is the place that third-wave feminism reached about sex work for women. That it can be a way of seizing control of the narrative of their bodies. That it can be empowering.

Leo is an attractive, well spoken and intelligent young man who is very adept at understanding the needs and desires of his clients. Such a person in real life would probably have other options if he wanted them. Third-wave feminism aside, this concept of sex work is one that society still struggles to embrace and give the dignity of being a morally and legally acceptable choice to make.

“I want to play at being young again,” she tells her paid-for paramour, explicitly stating the film’s barely hidden subtextual intertwining of la petite mort with an awareness of impending mortality.³

There were many compelling moments in the movie for me. One is where Nancy declares that her only path to the experience of her full sexuality is through a sex worker because, “who’s going to be interested in this body?” Another is when Leo reveals his trauma, which involved his mom walking in on him and a number of friends all tangled up together, exploring each other’s bodies, and never forgiving him for his “indiscretion.” Nancy is a retired sex-ed teacher who spent the bulk of her life being that unforgiving surrogate mother to the young women she taught. She taught them they should repress their sexuality and slut-shamed them for the way they dressed and carried on. Nancy never had sexual fulfillment in life because she, no doubt, had been given the same message about sex as she gave the girls she taught. Sex is for making babies and something you are obliged to let your husband do to you.

Nancy seeks a sexual awakening and in the development of the story of achieving it the movie asks, what is wrong with pleasuring ourselves with willing partners or paying for it if there isn’t a relationship at hand to provide it? As long as it is consensual, and nobody is getting hurt, physically or psychologically, what is the big deal about sexual pleasure? Why shouldn’t we have abundant amounts of it if we’d like to? Why can’t we talk about it openly and honestly if we want to?

Older women’s bodies, not to mention their sexuality, are something no one wants to think or talk about, least of all older women themselves. What everyone tells you when you’re young eventually becomes true: at a certain age—maybe 50, maybe 60—you become invisible to most other people on the street, especially men.⁴

A compelling part of the larger story is that Nancy and Leo have to build a relationship for the experience to work for Nancy. Sex is at its most fulfilling and satisfying in the context of a relationship, even when paid for. This is one of the many reasons I seek sexually explicit movies and not pornography. The sex, when it arrives, is more satisfying to watch because the writers, directors, and cast have built a relationship between themselves, the characters, and the audience that moves it beyond prurient interest.

As I said in last week’s post, I have been exploring erotic imagery, written and photographic. A few days ago, I came across a short video clip of two women engaged in oral sex. No faces are shown, just two bodies, one pleasuring the other in a natural way. During the brief clip, we see the woman being pleasured climax. It’s unlikely she is faking it. It’s a beautiful clip. Watching human beings achieve sexual fulfillment in a loving and respectful way fills me with sensual warmth. And yet, a part of me felt that watching the clip was something nobody should know about, not even my wife.⁵

I lost my virginity when I was a junior in high school. I often think back on that early experience as both wonderful and reckless. We were lucky that we didn’t get pregnant, as we didn’t use protection the first few times and were probably sloppy when we did. I am not sure how it came about, but she went on the pill fairly soon after we started having sex. I can testify that I was totally unprepared for the consequences of pregnancy should it have happened. I don’t think I was an emotionally and psychologically mature adult until I hit my 30s.

The time of blooming sexuality, and its exploration, is a passage fraught with risk of consequences that teenagers are ill prepared to deal with. So, I get that this transition needs to be managed away from those consequences. I can see a good argument for teaching abstinence for as long as possible, coupled with a frank and thorough education on how babies happen, and how to keep them from happening to you until you want one.⁶ But, once we are firmly in adulthood, why should we be constrained in exploring our desires and fantasies, as society tends to do in many ways?

Why should I be afraid to tell my wife about my fantasies, even if they are a little weird sometimes? Why should it feel risky for me to write that I enjoy sexually explicit movies and erotic material? Why is it frowned on, at least in my generation and the ones that came before, to be an openly sexual being?

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

— Virginia Woolf¹

The other night, at photography salon, a young woman blew into the room after we had started reviewing work. She was lugging a pile of material. There was a framed something; there was a massive book; there were images in protective sleeves. She set them down on a chair and walked over to pet Charlotte, the pit bull/boxer mix that had accompanied a salon member. We were reviewing female nude images by one of our regulars. As we were wrapping it up, the photographer asked the young woman whether she thought the images were sexual or sensual. She said she thought they were neither. She told us she’d been the subject of nude photography since she was 2 years old; that she modeled in the nude herself sometimes; that she was a member of a nudist colony; that she was genuinely interested in photographing people, mostly women, in the nude; that her work centered around the female nude and the landscape; that her life was in turmoil; that she was being forced to move from her home/studio; that she was forced to take down her website because of accusations of child pornography (shades of Sally Mann); that she had come to the salon because she had been meaning to for over a year and needed a break from packing up her studio/apartment.

When her turn came to share work, she spread out an array of imagery in a variety of formats. The centerpiece was an enormous, one of a kind, hand made book, coptic stitched together. A scrapbook, artist notebook, whatever. There was also a framed photograph of a nude black woman standing with her back to the camera in a v shaped rock formation in a rocky landscape. The black woman became the vulva between the thighs of the rock formation. Later in her presentation, we would discover that she had a vulva series, which were cropped closeups of a vulva, probably hers, but she didn’t say. She had positioned these closeup vulva images near the center of large pages and drawn and painted all around them in a beautiful, colorful, flowering way. She shared an image of a nude woman lying in an undulating landscape which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the bodies of other nude women. There was a nude woman swimming underwater, laminated to a piece of wood with a thick polyurethane coating and shards of glass embedded in the coating. These, she explained, were maquette samples of much larger works, made for porting around to galleries. There was an image of a circle of nude women lying on the ground in a star shape, heads to the center, feet to the perimeter, faces, bellies, breasts, and vulvas up. She told us her life was a mess; that she was in transition; that she wanted to get her MFA at either Yale or RISDI, which suggested she had money, or wildly impractical dreams, or maybe both. The work, and her presentation of it and self, were suggestive of a chaotic woman creative. What one might call a force of nature. I could believe she would get into either of those colleges. I don’t know if we will ever see her again. Her life was spinning her out of town. She said she’d be back, but who knows?

We show the world what we want the world to see. For some of us, too many of us, what we want the world to see is a reflection of what we believe it wants to see. For this woman, it was unquestionably what she wanted the world to see. Not reflective, but the radiant source of a fundamental, if chaotic, honesty. A solar, or perhaps lunar, flare. She seemed unapologetically, herself, a tempest, which might be spinning out of control, might be barely and forever just under control. It’s hard to know from one brief encounter. Yet, she brought something home to me.

I have been operating at the edges of the territory of reflecting what others want to see for all my 68 trips around the sun, constrained by the powerful star, then death star, of my father. I defied him constantly, but never fully escaped orbit. I was unable to reflect what he wanted to see, but also unable to break free of the mirror and frame imposed on me. It would have, I think, been news to him that I was in any way bound by his expectations of me.

I am a man. Now you may think I’ve made some kind of silly mistake about gender, or maybe that I’m trying to fool you, because my first name ends in a, and I own three bras, and I’ve been pregnant five times, and other things like that that you might have noticed, little details. But details don’t matter… I predate the invention of women by decades.

. —Ursula K. Le Guin²

So here I am, 68 years old, struggling to smash the mirror and escape the frame. I am stuck. Not s/he wolf enough to openly live my truth, not domesticated s/he dog enough to hide behind the reflective mirror.

We are on Block Island, enjoying a change of scenery. I wondered before we left, and continued wondering in the first few days of being here, what intention(s) I should set for this time away from the normal background of our lives. I feel the need for a reset. My life seems a jumble of mediocrity and successive near approaches to something like truth, without getting all the way there. None of it seems deep enough, or fundamental enough.

Lately, I have been seeking out erotic imagery of women, in writing and in photographs. Not the nasty and demeaning to the people involved stuff, but the soft core, sensual/sexual stuff. I am particularly interested in imagery, written and photographic, of intimacy between women. I am writing a story about physical and emotional love between two women. Does this erotic imagery drive towards some truth of me? Or is it a longing for things I have aged out of being able to have? I am way beyond the inflamed, sexual youth, whether it be male or female. Is it all longing to be what I can no longer be? Like a deep space probe, I am on a oneway journey out from the center of blazing passions; past the subdued, gently licking-flame passions of the mid-regions; out to the dying ember passions of the outer regions; soon to depart the realm of passions altogether. My connection to that blazing core is increasingly tenuous, my relevance ever diminishing. “Do not go gentle into that good night!” Dylan Thomas advises. I am too far out to be heard, even if I did rage.

Everything I do now seems a longing for something reachable only through memory and imagination. This aging body is of decreasing use to me and anyone else. It can’t fulfill my longings for that youthful blaze in anything like the way I remember the fact of it. I am an increasingly metaphysical being.

Simultaneously, I care less and less about what people think of me. I wonder if one of the things my father hated in me was the s/he wolf prowling around inside.

Metaphysi-me has been experiencing the application of lipstick to his lips as a deeply feminine thing. He has a fantasy about a woman lover who applies the lipstick to his lips, then kisses the s/he wolf that he is. Physical me feels good when metaphysi-me fantasizes this.

There is thunder outside. Is that the god I don’t believe in speaking to me about metaphysi-me? Repress, repress, repress.

Writing what I have written here has, for the moment, freed my mind. I feel relieved. I have welcomed metaphysi-me to the surface of my being. I don’t need for physi-me to manifest these things. What would be the point? It is enough to welcome metaphysi-me to the fold.

I am yin, I am yang. I am the blazing sun of day, I am the waxing and waning moon of night. I am woman, I am man. I welcome these complimentary parts of me to the fullness of my being.

I am not in a place of grace right now.

This week, a new struggle with a corporation arrived. Central Hudson, provider of our gas and electric service, lobbed a $1400 bill over our virtual transom. No, we didn’t consume $1400 of gas and electric in one month. We have solar panels that provide about 90% of our electrical power during the summer. And we only use gas for our stovetop to cook, our oven is electric. So no, there is no way we could have used that much gas and electric in one month. Or even several months.

The situation might be that we are finally being charged for electric and gas over many months. I don’t know. I have dutifully checked my account every month and when there was a bill, I paid it. There has been, for the past few months, a credit showing on our account. It seemed a little strange, but we are level billing customers. Twice a year, there is a recalculation of the average monthly usage, and a leveling up of the difference between projected and actual usage. In the past, this has meant we wound up with a credit that could cover a few months of payments. So, it didn’t seem that strange, given it was about time for the new calculations to be made and differences settled.

I am not the only customer having this sort of experience. There have been big problems with Central Hudson’s billing practices. There is a Facebook page dedicated to it. There is a class action lawsuit in progress. The phrase, “I’ve been Central Hudson-ed,” has become a thing.

Utility company bills have always been opaque. Central Hudson bills are particularly bad in this regard. It feels like you need an advanced degree in accounting to be able to sort them out. They admit that an attempt to improve their billing system has been a disaster, leading to all kinds of wild billing errors. Word on the street is that they still like to insist that the big bill is the bill. But really, which bills am I to believe? Those that showed a credit, or this seemingly outrageous and impossible bill? I suppose perspective is everything.

This weekend I will be devoting myself to researching our billing for the past year to see if I can develop a theory of where we stand. Then I will begin the process of getting things straightened out. Or at least to a place where I am pretty sure of what I do, or do not, owe.

You will recall that just a couple of weeks ago, I got embroiled in a fios-by-Verizon debacle. That has turned out reasonably well as I was able to find my way to a case manager, Wilson, who got it straightened out. It still required more time and energy than I wanted to give it, but at least I had a competent case manager who made sure I didn’t get lost in the wasteland of their bureaucracy.

I wonder if humanity made a mistake when people turned, or were forced to turn, away from a direct connection to the earth for their sustenance. When we began to allow bureaucracies, public, corporate, etc., to manage us and determine how we spent our time. Evilly conceived, ill-conceived and/or incompetently conceived bureaucracies suck up so much of our time with soul-deadening work and labyrinthian challenges to sort our consumer lives out.

I rather like this description of labor…

Representing an economy in which most people worked directly on the land or water to pull wheat into wagons and fish into barrels, Lincoln believed that “labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed—that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence, they hold that labor is the superior—greatly the superior of capital.”¹²

And this observation about corporations is all the more true in present times:

“The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”³

They are not only the masters of our time and effort, they are the chief wasters of our time too. I resent that. At 68, my time is more precious than ever.

The idea of a tiny cabin in the woods, completely off the grid, is starting to appeal. Do you think my wife would go for it?

Postscript

Yesterday, I logged on to my Central Hudson account to begin the process of sorting out what was going on. The $1400 owed had become $109. There were a bunch of credits, negating most of what I had owed just three days earlier. I paid that bill. I am going to have to keep a close eye on things. I resent that too.

As David Kurtz of _Talking Points Memo_put it two days later, “America is living through a reign of white supremacist terror,” and in a speech to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law on Monday, President Joe Biden reminded listeners that “the U.S. intelligence community has determined that domestic terrorism, rooted in white supremacy, is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the homeland–the greatest threat.”¹

When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election, I breathed a massive sigh of relief, as I am sure many people did. I was certain that a 45 second term would be the end of our democratic republic. That we would descend into some form of authoritarianism or fascism. 45 came very close to seizing full control of the leavers of power. How close, we would discover in the many months that followed.

As relieved as I was, I also knew we had only stopped the advance of the threat of authoritarian rule at that moment. We had not turned it back. As has been clear for some time, hard right conservatives had no use for a democratic republic form of government. If it functioned properly, and they were trying very hard to make sure it didn’t, they increasingly could not win. Their policy positions were too unpopular, and they were refusing to represent the interests of people of color, youth, and women.

Conservatives have invested decades of disciplined work in gaining control of state houses and governorships, especially those in what have become known as battleground states. They used this control to gerrymander districts and pass laws that made it more burdensome for minorities and the young to vote, and therefore, certain that they would have complete control. They had also invested decades into getting a conservative judiciary in place, which culminated with the appointment of three very conservative Supreme Court justices during the Trump administration.

White conservatives have done all this because the demographic writing was on the wall. White people are loosing ground as a percentage of the population. Minorities are projected to outnumber them by 2046.

Indeed, today’s white supremacist violence has everything to do with the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected the right to vote guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870 after white supremacists refused to recognize the right of Black Americans to vote and hold office. Minority voting means a government–and a country–that white men don’t dominate.²

From the data gathered in the last census, it has become clear that white population slippage is accelerating. For the first time, between 2010 and 2020, the white population has shrunk and minorities, principally asian and hispanic, have more than made up the difference, through both birth and immigration. In 1980, whites were 80% of the population. By 2020 that percentage had fallen to a little over 60%. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans identify as a race other than white.

By the end of the nineteenth century, white southerners greeted any attempt to protect Black voting as an attempt to destroy true America. Finally, in North Carolina in 1898, Democrats recognized they were losing ground to a biracial fusion ticket of Republicans and Populists who promised economic and political reforms. Before that year’s election, white Democratic leaders ran a viciously racist campaign to fire up their white base. “It is time for the oft quoted shotgun to play a part, and an active one,” one woman wrote, “in the elections.”³

For those to whom this decline matters—it doesn’t to me—the news is bleak. Not only has the white population shrunk for the first time, but its median age is the highest of all racial groups at 43.7, compared to 29.8 for Latinos or Hispanics, 34.6 for Black residents, 37.5 for Asian Americans. The younger the median age, the greater the fertility of the group.

Here is a list of the current demographic trends:

• Six states are majority-minority as of July 2019: Hawaii, New Mexico, California, Texas, Nevada, and Maryland.

• Washington, D.C., and all populated United States territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa) are also majority-minority. None of the current United States territories ever had a white majority.
• As of 2011, minority births (children under age 1) are the majority among births nationwide.
• As of 2017, minority children comprise the majority among children in fourteen states: the six that are already majority-minority, plus the following eight: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Delaware, Alaska, New York, and Mississippi.
• As of 2019, children are majority minority nationwide.
• Per the 2020 United States Census, the percentage of non-Hispanic white residents is below 60% in seventeen states: the six that are already majority-minority, plus the following eleven: Georgia (50.1%), Florida (51.5%), New Jersey (51.9%), New York (52.5%), Arizona (53.4%), Mississippi (55.4%), Louisiana (55.8%), Alaska (57.5%), Illinois (58.3%), Delaware (58.6%), and Virginia (58.6%).
• The whole United States of America is projected to become majority-minority by the middle of the 21st century if current trends continue. The U.S. will then become the first major post-industrial society in the world where the dominant group established in an earlier period transitioned from majority to minority under the influence of changing demographics. With alternate immigration scenarios, the whole United States is projected to become majority-minority sometime between 2041 and 2046 (depending on the amount of net immigration into the U.S., birth/death rates, and intermarriage rates over the preceding years).⁴

It’s important to emphasize the uniqueness of this situation. As the quotes I have shared from a recent Heather Cox Richardson post indicate, the specter of white supremacy has a long history. During that history, white people always had the demographic upper hand, until now.

This political side of white supremacy is all around us. As Democracy Docket put it last month, “Republicans have a math problem, and they know it. Regardless of their candidate, it is nearly certain that more people will vote to reelect Joe Biden than his Republican opponent.” After all, Democrats have won the popular vote since 2008. Under these circumstances and unwilling to moderate their platform, “Republicans need to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat.”

So, to me, it looks like 2024 is a pivotal year. The one that likely decides what kind of government we have going forward. The white patriarchal authoritarian play won’t be available much beyond that. If I were a card-carrying member of the white patriarchy, I’d be pretty desperate about this upcoming election. That is why it’s going to get even more wild and wooly in the coming months, in my opinion. If we can hold on to whatever is passing for a Democratic Republic right now, then we will likely get the chance to improve on it.

There are signs that the current conservative pendulum swing has overshot the mark and will start to head back in a more liberal direction.⁵ Conservatives have overreached. Women are upset with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Young people are upset about many things, but the evidence is that they will vote, and they will side with the more multicultural offering. Minorities have a long history of reasons to be upset and will vote, despite the hurdles put in their way. If the more liberal forces hold on and turn back the authoritarian gambit, it will be a long time before there is another opportunity, and by then, white supremacy won’t be the issue.

Will this swing away from white supremacy and towards a multicultural future mean that our societal woes will be over? I imagine we will have a transition period during which power is more equitably distributed among the races. During this period, there may be an opportunity. To me, there is the overarching problem of capitalism and its exploitation of everyone and everything to accumulate wealth and power. This period of equitable power distribution may allow us to find a new way of organizing ourselves and our behavior. At the same time, climate change will be applying enormous pressure on us to find that new way. Without finding our way to an economic system that isn’t about exploitation and power accumulation, we will continue to have issues of power abuse, even as the abused and the abusers change positions.

Tenacity and acumen are privileged spectators of this inhuman show in which absurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue.

—Albert Camus

Verizon fios recently arrived on our street. The trucks descended like a swarm of locusts in July to string the wires. “At last!” we thought, “an alternative to Optimum!” When the get-everybody-signed-up crew arrived at our door, we discovered we could have faster internet for half the price of Optimum. There were perks too! Our price guaranteed for 4 years; A $200 Verizon card; A $200 Home Depot card; 6 Months of Disney+ for free. We jumped ship immediately.

A week later, a technician came to install a wire from the street to the house, set up the equipment, and get us going with the promised blazing fast internet. We were up and running in less than two hours.

There was only one problem, the ugly white signal extender tower sitting on the floor of our living room. It’s ugly we said. “It’s powerful, the technician said. “It will cover the whole house,” he said. “No need for your Eero mesh network,” he said. “Ok, we’ll try your ugly white tower,” we said, “maybe it’s better.” It wasn’t. So we unplugged it and plugged in our Eero mesh network. Strong signal everywhere. “Yay! Let’s return the ugly white tower!”

The next day, we hauled the ugly white tower to the Verizon store. “We can’t take back fios equipment here,” we were told, “You have to go to the store across the river.”

The next day, we went to the store across the river. “Sure, we can take it back!” the sales associate said. He sat me down at the counter, and got busy working magic on the computer. I told him I didn’t need it because my Eero mesh network was better. He said something that made me think he thought I was unhappy with fios. I told him I was happy with fios, just didn’t need this piece of equipment. He nodded, finished the computer intake, and printed out a receipt. We went merrily on our way, free of the ugly white tower.

When we got home, we discovered we had no internet. “Oh no!” I thought. I called the store across the river and asked if they had disconnected our service. “Yes,” they said. “But why?!” I said, “I didn’t ask for that!” “A misunderstanding,” they said. “But we’ll get it back for you.” After 20 minutes of back and forth, being on hold, etc., the sales associate came back on and said, “I have bad news. We can’t just reconnect you. You have to start over again and set up a new account.” “What?!” I said. “You disconnected me in a matter of minutes, but it’s going to take days to reconnect me?! What about my signing bonuses?” I proceeded to call him every filthy word I could think of, and hung up. It was not one of my better moments. I wondered if the river we crossed had been the Styx.

When I became more rational, I decided we needed guidance for our journey through fios purgatory. I asked my wife to post what had happened to the Facebook hive mind. She got much commiseration and some good suggestions, but none of them seemed like “the” suggestion. And then, an old high school classmate of hers sent a private message saying, “yup, you really do have to set up a new account, but here’s what you do. You send a letter to the Chairman/CEO of Verizon explaining what happened. Include all available documentation. Send it overnight and require a signature. In a few days, a very competent person will call to help you deal with the situation.”

And that is exactly what happened!

A man named Wilson was my case manager. I was in yoga class when he called. He left a message with detailed instructions on how to get through to him. He also emailed. I replied to the email saying I would be available from 2 on. He replied, saying a sales associate would call me at 2. As I am communicating with Wilson, I can’t get the image of Wilson, the volley ball from the movie Cast Away, out of my head.

At 2 pm sharp, a woman called to help me with my new account. When we finished an hour or so later, she told me I would see a reconnection date on my order confirmation that was for sometime next week. She said Wilson would call, and he would be able to expedite the reconnection. Later that afternoon, Wilson called to tell me I was all connected and that I should test it out. “Oh,” I thought, “so you can punch a few numbers and letters into a computer and have me reconnected just as quickly as you disconnected me!” I told him it would take me some minutes to do that, so we agreed I would send an email letting him know if it was working. It was, and I did.

Wilson and I have been emailing back and forth, sorting out the last few details. A credit for the month already paid for on my former account. The restoration of the $200 Home Depot card that was no longer available for my new account and way better than what was.

“All’s well that ends well,” I thought. “Think of it as part of your hero’s journey,” I told myself.

Postscript

The other night, a truck pulled up and something landed on our front porch with a substantial thud. I went out to see what it was. A box from Verizon? I hauled it into the house and opened it. I was speechless, it was a new ugly white tower! I had told the woman I didn’t need it. Wilson had confirmed with me that I didn’t need it. But fios purgatory was having none of it!

I emailed Wilson and asked him if I should call an exorcist, return it, or stick it in the back of a closet until the day comes that I do want to terminate my service.

I haven’t heard back from Wilson yet, but I’m sure I will.

Last week, in a conversation about scheduling ourselves at our health club, I told my wife that I would not be using the weight machines anymore. She asked why. I informed her that I wanted to focus on exercise that has a mind, body, earth, and community connective focus as much as possible. I think weight machines, treadmills, cycling machines, etc. are among the least connective ways to exercise in this regard. We have been doing three yoga classes a week, and yoga is the epitome of mind, body, earth, and community connective practice as far as I am concerned. I will focus on yoga.

Also, last week, I began a transformation away from social media. I removed all my social media apps from my phone, except Facebook Messenger. I use FBM to communicate with a woman in town who is struggling and needs my occasional help getting to this or that because she doesn’t have a car. All social media activity from now forward will happen through browser portals, if at all. I am removing the constant urge to check and see if anyone responded to what I posted. This turned out to be a constant source of anxiety and disappointment for me, as it is for many people. Who needs that?

I have decided to focus on getting out of the house and going for walks (mind, body, earth, sometimes community) and winding up at local coffee shops, where I can have direct human-to-human contact (definitely community). Even if that contact is superficial banter with a barista whose name I know and who knows mine, it’s better than the social media app stand-ins we are plagued with. Even if I know no one, and talk to no-one, I am in a space alive with people interacting analog fashion. So that’s it, the coffee shops are my analog version of social media apps. They are way more satisfying.

Another analog social media app is my daily early morning walk and photograph practice. Often, they are strictly mind-body-earth affairs. Occasionally, they are community affairs, too. I meet people I know. I see people I don’t know, but know them as regulars on the street. Every so often, I learn their names.

A few weeks ago, on one of these morning walks, I encountered a young woman arriving for work at a local artisanal chocolatier. I watched a few moments of obvious frustration and bad-dayness unfold. It culminated with her smartphone crashing on the pavement as she juggled her too-many-to-manage things. “You’re not having a good day, are you?” I said to her. She shook her head no, and told me that the brakes on her car had failed, that she was having to spend $1000 on a rental car, and that any number of other little things were not going well. I listened with empathy, who among us hasn’t been there? When it seemed she’d gotten it all out, I told her I hoped her day would be better from this point forward, then continued on my walk.

For the next few weeks, I periodically ran into her and would ask if things had gotten any better. She would say not really, and I would encourage her to hang in there, these runs of frustration and struggle do, eventually, end. I always wished her a better rest of her day as I walked on.

A few days ago, I ran into her again and asked her if things had gotten better. She flashed me a big smile and said, “yes! Much better. I got my car back and I moved!” I gave her a big thumbs up and told her that was great, and I was happy for her. She thanked me for the support I had been giving her for the past few weeks. A great example of my walks being mind, body, earth, and community connective.

You might wonder what has precipitated this new fondness for analog interaction with the world.

I have been reading a lot this year. More than I did last year and most years before that. Two books are having a big impact on me. I began the year with Sylvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch. I mentioned this book last week in my somewhat disorganized and inconclusive post on Men, Women, and Capitalism.

What I learned from Ms. Federici is that capitalism is an organizing force of enormous consequence. Consequence that is brutal and harmful to the mind, body, earth, and community connections I began this post with. It has rearranged the relationships between men, and women, and the earth, in profoundly destructive ways. It has fragmented the world and its creatures into things that, in their thingness, are maximally exploitable. This includes you and me. Divided, everything and everyone is exploited and utility is the quality everything and everyone must have.

The second book that is having a considerable impact on me is The Matter with Things, by Iain McGilchrist. This book is most directly responsible for the shift I am making towards mind, body, earth, and community, and away from social media apps and exercise machines.

A basic thesis of The Matter with Things is that we have become the victims of left-hemisphere hypertrophy and right-hemisphere atrophy. That is, we depend much more on the left side of our brains than the right side to interact with the world. McGilchrist marshals a ton of evidence that suggests this is a bad trend. The left brain, he argues, is a brain of expediency to which a full understanding of the context (truth) of things is unimportant. What is important to the left brain is what’s in front of it in any given moment, and what needs or can be done with it. Self-preservation, utility, and utilization are the name of the game with the left brain. The ability to apprehend a situation quickly, and react to it, is an indispensable survival trait developed over millions of years. When fight-or-flight or basic survival is the issue, a full understanding of context is eschewed in favor of reaction in-the-moment. It is the right brain, McGilchrist tells us, that is capable of understanding context and developing a meaningful narrative about it. It is the right brain that can situate itself in space and time, and understand the narrative that is the mind and body interacting with the earth and the cosmos. It is the right brain that can grope towards truth and meaning through experience, and in league with a community of individuals.

Why it is bad to be over reliant on the left brain is explained through narratives about patients with right hemisphere damage, who depend, consequently, on the left hemisphere to navigate the world. It is also explained through narratives on patients suffering with schizophrenia, which expresses symptoms in line with patients suffering from right hemisphere damage. Autism, too, shares symptoms with right hemisphere damage. McGilchrist argues that this complex of symptoms is present in modern society, indicating the hypertrophy of left brain thinking. And right hemisphere atrophy means the loss of our connection to, and grounding in, the world, which leads to the loss of our tether to reality, and the ability to recognize truth. As a result, we are unable to find meaning in our existence.

McGilchrist has not, so far, pointed the finger at capitalism directly, but he does point it at what Federici has helped me see as the pernicious effects of a capitalist attitude towards the world.

I have begun making the changes described above in an effort to make sure my right hemisphere remains engaged and in charge. I want to live wholly in the world with other human beings. This, I think, is the antidote to the fragmentation of capitalism.