relief

i didn’t know that it would feel both so totally normal and so totally new, that it would feel like both everything and nothing has changed all at once.

gitta, the mikveh lady, told my beit din while i was under water that i was “good at this” – that i was good at dunking. such a funny thing to report on, but it made my heart swell, too. those waters were so warm, so calm. i loved the mikveh.

i haven’t been at a pulpit since 2000 or 2001. that’s when i preached my going away sermon in seattle, washington, in the united methodist church.  it was full of grief and pain, and also of conviction and clarity. i knew i was not going to be able to say the things about jesus i ultimately was going to have to. i also knew that the umc was never going to affirm me. it is better to take oneself out of damaging situations than to continue to beg for affirmation from people who can’t see you, can’t see your dignity and worth.

and here i am, ten years later. who knew i would be at this place. when i walked to the bima for my affirmation of belief, i was trembling, my voice was shaking as i read it, as i started the sh’ma after. and when i came back up to it later, for my drash, a deep breath and i was in it. the microphone and music stand familiar positioning for me, looking out on my friends and my congregation in front of me and i felt, again, at home. everything is so moving, and everything is so new. but everything is also so familiar, the movements of being up in front of a congregation, coming back to me like stretching muscles. who knew that i would ever get to do this again? who knows where i will go from here.

2011
11/07
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oh

the strange thing is, walking through the world with new awareness: this hand is a jewish hand; this home is a jewish home; this cat is a jewish cat; this prayer is a jewish prayer, said by a real jew. somehow, not at all different than when i woke up this morning, yet somehow, so completely different that i notice the inflection in everything i do.

everything has changed. and nothing has changed. but really, and truly, everything has changed.

2011
11/03
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new thing now

1. moving to my first studio apt tomorrow. it’s so large, and has beautiful detailing, and idiosyncrasies that are less beautiful, like all new york apartments. but the kitchen is larger than my current bedroom, and is a completely separate room from the living space, and there is a chandelier and a hallway and three closets and a chalkboard and a fire escape.
2. my conversion is this coming week. i am four days from being “officially” jewish. i can’t believe this day is coming so soon. i have so much yet to prepare, but am so close.
3. it feels very much like tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life, and i feel very aware of it, and very proud of myself, and so excited, and full of so much gratitude and awe than i have ever known.
2011
10/29
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burnt the f*&%$ out

i am writing from the stone house, on a retreat called soul sanctuary. it’s for activists and organizers who are burnt out. it was started like 15 years ago and got its own land in the last few years. it’s quiet here. there are 70 acres. i can wander and do what i want. we are to be silent at least until noon, but you can be silent longer if you want to. there are badges so people know whether or not they can talk to you. our facilitator is an alternative medicine practitioner that does core synchronization and is kind and open-hearted and we can talk to her about whatever it is that we’re feeling. the whole idea of the retreat is that liberation work in this broken-ass world of ours can really take a toll on us, spiritually, and that for us to be able to heal the world we need to be able to be whole into ourselves. so they offer these free retreats, and it is perfect. i have a room alone. i can be as alone as i want and need. i can go down and see people. there is food. i have a chore. there are chickens. there is meditation time.

also, i am sick. i went away to the national havurah committee’s summer institute last week, which gave my burnt-out body enough time away to get sick (remember college? remember getting sick during spring break? exactly). so i showed up here on day 3 of evil cold and am now on day 4, the hacking shit up day. this is what burnout looks like. your body slowly rebells against you – this is the 3rd or 4th time this year i’ve had this same cold. you stop being able to logically process information. my head is hazy even on the best days right now. i have a hard time distinguishing important tasks from less-important tasks. there is a very serious divide between what i am doing with my days and what i want to be doing with my days. and even on my best days at work, i wish to be *anywhere* else.

my job is, largely, a dream job. what trans person doesn’t want a job where they get to work within their own community? but the reality is, it’s a really hard job. there are not a lot of resources. a lot of the resources do exist are leadership-building and organizing resources, not direct services. so you can join movement-building teams to respond to transphobia at HRA, but it’s still monumentally difficult to get anything from HRA. people need housing, food, jobs, health care that covers their actual medical needs. i can give them listening, talk them through strategies for dealing with the bullshit, a sounding board, a buffer. it’s not enough, and i’m left dealing with the psychic fallout from failing to bridge the chasm between what is needed and what i can offer.

this is exactly what burnout camp is for: to give us a space to deal with all the energy we take in while we’re doing work transformative work. because really, i have to go back to my job on monday. and the monday after that, and the monday after that. how do we keep on keeping on when this world is not set up to support us in it? how do we keep our visions for justice and liberation when our hearts are so broken by the struggle itself? i don’t know. but hopefully the space of this weekend away will give a little more mending, and a little more breathing space, and a few more ideas about how to do my work without tearing my heart wide open.

2011
08/11
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Social justice? What does it even mean?

I am not for social justice. I don’t even know what social justice means. I am for racial justice. For gender justice. For economic justice. I am for self-determination, bodily autonomy, and community that fights for each other and with each other. These are not social issues. These are political issues. My body and my community are political. Yours are, too, even if yours are less contested.

When we call political issues social issues we water them down; we make our calls for justice and liberation palatable to the institutions, powers, and popular mindsets we are railing against. We appease the power we fight against by making our inequality and injustice demure, domesticated “issues.” I don’t know about you, but when I feel dirty for being a class-passing working class person, when I get leered at for walking down the street in my leggings, when I got asked “how can you mutilate your body?” while preparing for top surgery and “do you regret being on hormones, having surgery?” now that I look like a girl again, these are not issues. This is the mundane violence of the capitalist world we live in, with its varied claims upon our bodies and lives.

So no, I am not for social justice. I want justice and righteousness to sweep through this world and get us ever so much closer to olam haba. It will not be clean and easy; it will not be domesticated. It will not be about social order. It will be about political and economic orders, about the very fabric of our collective, interdependant being. It will be about undoing all the violence we have wrought on this world and on each other. I don’t want social justice in this world and all its systems. I want us to change the world, to make it safe and whole for all of us.

2011
05/17
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desire

i don’t know when it hit me, that my desires have changed. last week? the week before? yesterday? this morning? a year ago? all i know is that my desire is different.

when i was a child, i imagined myself as an adult: single, self-sufficient, a parent of one, interesting, cultured, living in a city, romantic liaisons with whomever i wanted (but no specific, committed, stable partner. 

desire in neoni am an adult now. and until this year, my vision of myself has been the same. but suddenly. things have changed. my desire has changed. i want things i have never wanted before. backyards, for example. maybe a car. more importantly, and more inexplicably: a partner. someone to grow with, to fight with, to learn to love in ever expansive ways with.

i am always a person who thinks through entirely before doing. always. i need to understand the minutiae, the intricacies.

being single has always made sense because i knew that i would be able to love myself and my child wholly. i was, have been, am still so terrified that i will never be able to give the people closest to me all the love they need. the idea of having a partner AND a child terrified me, terrifies me, because i cannot, will not, have one of them feel that i am not giving them all the love, care, and devotion that they need and deserve. and i cannot, will not, feel that i am not giving myself the love, care, and devotion that i need and deserve. but something has shifted, and i feel capable. not scarce. capable. of doing all that. maybe it’s possible, and i can be all of those things that i never had from a parent growing up. and maybe i will fail, but the trying hard will matter. and maybe a million maybes.

all i know is that i’m not trying to protect myself or my theoretical child or theoretical partner anymore; i’m just feeling the desire. and in that desire, there is space, and hope, and joy.

2011
05/13
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reading rainbow

i updated my reading list today, and am wondering: what are you reading? what is capturing your imagination and curiosity? i’m especially, as always, interested in judaica and theology, food writing, and creative writing (fiction, poetry, and essays). it’s spring and i’m ever-interested in the new.

2011
05/02
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This is important. This is really important.

My therapist repeated this to me, over and over, in effort to get me to really hear it. To make me sit with the feeling of the thing I was telling her that I want, that I want to do. I explained to her about how it is not that huge. I explained to her again about why I think I minimize it. I explained to her again about how my explaining head works. A therapist of times past once told me that I intellectualize to avoid sitting in the feeling. And its true, to a point. The thing is that I’m really very good at feeling. What I’m very bad at is giving voice and legitimacy to the things I am feeling in their fullness, without footnotes that would make any legal text envious.
mars bar

thanks for the memories

This is important. Therapy was so early yesterday morning and I am still hearing the reverberations of that phrase. It makes me pay more attention to the things around me. To the things I am doing. To the things other people are doing. To myself as I talk about my rabbinical path. To the four year old who is over there, dancing. To my friend who is so close to adopting a teenager. To the quality of feeling I get from lying in my bed in the sun from my abundant windows. To not so subtle marks of resistance when resistance seems futile, like the goodbye message Mars Bar has painted on its facade. To the older woman at the klezmer night at the Ukrainian National House, who touched my shoulder, said: I love your tattoo (a giant sprawling jellyfish). To the decision I made during morning prayers yesterday, to be fun and playful at work. These mundane things are important, are so important.

What is the quality of feeling of the importance? Where does it sit in your body? What does it feel like to hear, “this is important” about something you are doing. Not to have it shouted at you. Not to have it drilled in to you. But to hear it said it calmly, carefully, to you: this is important. What you are doing is important. Your place in the world is important. You are important.

I have no skills around this. This is the bulk of my healing work, and I spent most of the day with a rose quartz on my heart, hoping that it will help me make some space there for this work. But I think also this is the healing work of this world I live in, which seems so hell bent on making everyone believe all time that we are unimportant, insignificant automatons of capitalism. I just want us each, and all, to be able to say to each other, and to hear for ourselves: this is important. The things your are doing are important. You are important.

2011
04/30
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home

i have lived here, in this room, for 8 days now. my cat, burt reynolds (yes, indeed, that is her name), came here two days ago, and she has been jointly hiding under my bed and hissing at her new cat-mate, l. l is a very friendly cat. truth be told, so is burtseleh. but burt is a calico, and she is shy and protective. so mostly, these past two days, she has been growling. then peeking out from my tiny sunporch of a room, meeting l briefly again, engaging in some sort of hissing-and-growling fit, then running back to my room as soon as possible.

i feel like burt right now, in this moment. i can’t really tell when i’m hissing or growling or what, but there is a constant back-and-forth of grounding down, then moving out, confronting something unexpected and perhaps unwanted, hissing and growling at it, hoping it will go away, and running back into my quiet place. unlike burt, who will have to just adapt to her new reality with l, i hope that i don’t have to just open myself fully to the things that i’m encountering. because really, i don’t want them.

i was told last week that if having good trans politics was my bar for whether or not people were ok, i am setting myself up, since it will never happen. it made me so angry, and so sad. what? am i supposed to just suck myself up to the bullshit people put out there? no. and maybe there are parts that i do need to do better. like, maybe have more space for people to have errors and come back. but i’m not even looking for people to be perfect. i’m looking for people to try, to respect me, to not exploit trans experiences and trans bodies.

my home now, the one i live in, it is quiet. i live in the backest corner of the house, and the house is full of feminist queer gender variant people, and a lot of working class experience. it is nice to feel basic and seen and to have a moment of pause in here, outside of the world we all live in. i need to have some place to rest within a world that causes a lot of hissing and spitting.

but maybe, through it all, my heart will grow, too.

2011
04/05
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how we used to be

I’m on the B, on my way into work this morning. I had forgotten I’d put Whitney on my ipod: the greatest love of all came on.

My gramma listened to the soft rock and power ballads station. My musical life at her house was the Beatles, Elton John, Boston, and Whitney, to name some. We would sit at the dining room table, me doing homework or coloring or reading and always singing under my breath, her needlepointing Renoir replicas* or reading. We would talk intermittently, stop for meal preparation, sometimes I’d get bored and go to my grampa who was inevitably at his computer with the local jazz station playing.

This morning, maybe there was something about the light in the train that reminded me of her home in Spokane. Or maybe I caught the right phrase at the right time, but there was a lyric, a breath, a pause, and then my heart broke again.

My gramma died on April 19, 2004. I miss her madly all the time, but more in these weeks leading up to her yarzheit than ever. I mark her yartzheit not on the lunar calendar, because she was not Jewish. But it is right to honor the dead. With lights and prayers and memories and heartbreak years after the fact, reminding me that mourning is never really done. It just becomes part of me, healing over as a scar, becoming part of my skin and bones and daily life.

So singing along to Whitney this morning, this song is for you, Shirley. May your memory be a blessing.

———

* Really, my gramma did this. She also made needlepoint replicas of blue and white china patterns and British tapestries. Because she’s British, and apparently this is what my people do.

2011
03/24
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