It's Been A Rough Few Days On The Run

Ichiro Tsuruta, from JCA Annual 8 (1989)

It's so odd being off my antidepressants for the first time in ages (new GP delays). I've had constant headaches and gotten lethargic really early through the days, and now it's the end of the 2nd day without them and it's like the future just lost meaning again? After I've actually been getting excited about planning for the future for a while now? At least it proves my dosage I guess.

An English Boy thinking of the Nation from which he got his Name

A poem I wrote recently after starting to study Irish history:

I sit in class,

And learn of a past

That in many ways once was mine.

Though generations divorced, is it not natural to pine?

For a heritage too vast to grasp.

At home are pictures of a land unfamiliar:

Of faces, green spaces and castles.

And though their meaning escapes me,

And the memories long left me,

I know they mean much more.

In my mind's ear I hear fiddles,

But all I comprehend are riddles.

To follow is a rite of passage

From which I could only scavenge:

A path left but unearnt.

The waves of the coast call to me,

They beckon me back to the quay.

Again I hesitate to follow,

My connection only being hollow,

But now I have a chance to see.

To see revolutions rise and quickly fall,

The mistreatment and the brawls,

And the poets dreaming of a free home.

They tell stories of white horses- across the fields they roam;

A return to a culture stolen.

To discover the rural lands once more,

To grasp the many wars,

To comprehend the intricacies and allegiances.

The negotiations that devolved into grievances,

And the retaliations spun into tales of yore.

One image stands out in the mist:

A memorial of cold stone.

This one belongs to my grandfather, but I know of many more:

O'Connell; Parnell; Struck down by hearts broken, by causes lost.

The Banshees’ howls echoing around them.

I may not grasp the history, the language or the myths.

My blood may not be Irish like those before me,

But I have the chance to learn, to reconnect.

I know what I am:

An English boy thinking of the nation from which he got his name.

Holy Trinity.

Now that I study Politics, all I can think about is the theories applying to what she’s saying. I should be able to just enjoy Monty Python.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), dir. Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Dune by Chezka Sunit 

I’m a cis-gender man which basically means that, when I was born, the doctor went “It’s a boy!” and when I was old enough to understand I agreed with him.

The thing is, I don’t know why I feel like a man.  I was teased and bullied for it a lot when I was little.  I’ve never had stereotypically American male interests.  I never cared about sports or cars or guns.  I was more interested in music and cooking and the arts.  I’ve always been emotionally in tune and sensitive, even when I did my best to suppress my emotions to survive a childhood of abuse from other children.

It’s not physical either.  I don’t feel like a man because I have a penis or a beard.  If you put my brain in a robot body or any other body, my essence would still feel male (I assume).  I literally can’t imagine what being any other gender would feel like, since I feel so acutely male.

I think that’s why the concept of being transgender always made sense to me.  I’m a man.  I don’t have any bloody clue why I feel like a man, but I don’t feel that it’s tied to my body or my interests or the way that I’ve been treated.  I feel like a man because of something beyond that.  Something ephemeral.  So, why couldn’t others feel the same?  Why couldn’t a person who’s been misidentified as a girl feel like a boy for the exact same nebulous reasons that I do?

And, since gender really doesn’t make any sense to me anyway, why couldn’t there also be people who feel as if they don’t have one?  Or who flow across genders like a ship on a map?

Are there people out there whose sense of their own gender is inseparable from their physical form?  If you put those people into robot bodies or, simply, other physically different bodies, would their gender identity also swap?  If so, why?  Are they actually more lost in their gender identity than I am and they need to hone in on the physical in order to anchor themselves?

Why do people feel like they are the gender that they are?

Atlantis, in pastels on rough watercolour paper.

I was in stitches when I first saw this. The tragic part is it makes too much sense. Why must you put us through this Michael? I get that you’re a demon trying to help his friends, but really? At least we get the Judge’s gestures to represent this debacle.

But like, Jason BEEN knew.