In Philly

This place feels like a hometown. That pent-up feeling like you are humming with energy that will never really find its way out of you until you leave. I left West Philly this morning and am sitting in a cafe near my friend’s house in Mt. Airy, where I used to walk dogs when I ridiculously quit a full time job at Drexel for the glamour of working part-time at a queer youth dropin center in Center City. I did it with the hope that it would turn into a full-time gig, which it did. But in the interim period, while it was part-time, I walked the dogs of bougie people in Mt Airy (and, let’s be honest, pretended I was a little bougie myself, with my dog(s) on a leash and latte-in-hand and happy demeanor from walking something like 5 miles every day. It is an appealing life. Just watch In Her Shoes.). So it is weird to be here, to have been in West Philly the past couple days, while I am in this clear moment of taking Next Steps in my life. It feels exactly like being in Spokane, the last city I lived in where I just felt like everything was hard and it was too hard to figure out how to make the city work for me, so of course the only decision was to leave. (Of course I was a closeted teenager in Spokane: that didn’t help.)

I am here for an open house at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. I can’t even begin to say how excited I am about this. I want so badly to make this step and am so scared that I won’t be accepted. And am so nervous that somehow the ontological difference of being in Philadelphia as a rabbinical student won’t override the soul-crushing restlessness that I seem to always experience in Philly. All I can do is be open and hope, though. To A’s tonight, and a lot of work to do for my synagogue. To RRC tomorrow for open house, starting with shacharit. I am eager and hopeful that I’ve structured this part well enough that I can see a little into how it would feel to be here like this.

Wish me luck, and may it all come to pass in its own time. I will remain open and hopeful. Even through the restlessness, if it persists.

Lunchtime Walks

I have been taking lunchtime walks this week. Well, really only two: I started mid-week and skipped Friday since I was leaving early to get ready for Locally Grown Shabbat, the service I organize at Kolot Chayeinu.

Here is the thing about lunchtime walks: you get to move about and remember you are not a mindless automaton. Also, the secret thing about NYC is that it’s way easier here than in other cities to completely abandon exploring the city in favor of the repetitive schleps we all take to-and-from work (and the other routine places we go to). I see the space between the 14th St. A/C/E stop and Callen-Lorde; I see the space between the B at Newkirk and my house; I see the space between my therapist’s office at Union Square and the walk down 16th to my office; I see the space around my girlfriends house; between the F at 9th St. and Kolot; I see the shops on Cortelyou; I see the four blocks between my house and L&A’s house. It’s all very routine.

But lunchtime walks! It changes everything! Who knew there was WATER right there! A skate park! A carousel! The UHaul location that M and I returned our UHaul to just after we moved here from Seattle! Art Galleries EVERYWHERE! It’s one of those moments that happens to me every year: there are THINGS TO DO and I could just leave! my! office! and DO THEM! Even in the middle of the day!

I don’t know what it is about this city that means I forget this, forget all sense of wonder and excitement about the world I live in. But it’s how it is. So lunchtime walks, they seem like a good way to counteract the inevitable, if I can continue to do them and not succomb to the inertia of the every day in my office. But everything is better, I have to tell you, if you take 45 minutes out of your day to really MOVE about. Everything is better.

So here’s to lunchtime walks, and exploration. To, godwilling, the coming spring and remembering that this city has so many beautiful things for us to find. Like these stumps that used to be docks, reminding me that sometimes New York looks a lot like Seattle.

Rules to Live By

I have been away from the blogging for so long, and can’t give you anything too substantive today, but I want to leave you with these two  blog posts that I am completely obsessed with. They are both lists, both by Notable Literary Figures (Henry Miller and Joan Didion, respectively). Both offer two different, but equally important and compelling sets of rules. I am inspired by their conviction, brevity, clarity. By the ways that they are both clearly motivated by passion, diligence, and a willingness to be moved by inspiration. That with regulation comes space for whim — that is what I am looking for in my life: enough diligence and regularity that I have all the time and space I need to go where my heart leads me.

—

Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments. He wrote these while he was publishing Tropic of Cancer (1930s) and they are published in Henry Miller on Writing. I found them on Letters of Note (although inexplicably the post shows up on my Google Reader, but not on the blog itself. The internet is an elusive thing).

COMMANDMENTS

1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5. When you can’t create you can work.
6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9. Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

—

Joan Didion’s Packing List, published in The White Album in 1979 (the year I was born!) and posted on Keep It Chic

To Pack and Wear:
2 skirts
2 jerseys or leotards
1 pullover sweater
2 pair shoes
stockings
bra
nightgown, robe slippers
cigarettes
bourbon
bag with: shampoo, toothbrush and paste, Basis soap, razor, deodorant, aspirin, prescriptions, Tampax, face cream, powder, baby oil

To Carry:
mohair throw
typewriter
2 legal pads and pens
files
house key

This is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less steadily. The list enabled me to pack, without thinking, for any piece I was likely to do. Notice the deliberate anonymity of costume: in a skirt, a leotard, and stockings, I could pass on either side of the culture. Notice the mohair throw for trunk-line flights (i.e. no blankets) and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off. Notice the bourbon for the same motel room. Notice the typewriter for the airport, coming home: the idea was to turn in the Hertz car, check in, find an empty bench, an start typing the day’s notes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

i 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.

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.