Thursday, April 27, 2006

Hrm.

Sometimes, I *do* feel profoundly selfish.

posted by Ergane @ 10:13 PM 0 comments

Lately...


The thing that bothers me most about people considering Brokeback Mountain "a love story" is that it gives this idea that the only love possible for gay people is tragic love. Sure, it may call upon you to call that guy you were so in love with when you weren't out or whatever, but it cannot, that cannot substain a relationship.

I don't want that reflection.

I don't feel that the love I share with Ryan is built on tragedy. It does not need to be a tragic love in order to survive, to be.

I find it odd... People can see what other people will see wrong with movies like, say, Soul Plane which actually wasn't *that* bad -- shit, at least the gay guy in that movie HAD a fucking sexuality and he was treated as a part of instead apart from... , but not see what is wrong with a movie like Brokeback Mountain which will go down in history as something... really moving and great and all because white assimilationist faggots and white-identified assimilationist faggots of color and heterosexuals *liked it*.

Considered it daring.

*snorts and spits*

***

It is so hard, sometimes, talking to younger gay people. Mainly because they think they know everything and you know nothing. I remember people complaining about that when I was a kid (... a "know-it-all")...

Sometimes, I really hate biting my tongue.

JLA and Teen Titans -- I have been absorbing them whole... the way I have been drinking stuff as of late.

But I should really continue directing energy inwardly -- I don't have time to bother too much with stupid people with stupid opinions someone taught them had to be respected.

Shit, like my opinions are respected.

I live anyway.

posted by Ergane @ 3:28 AM 1 comments

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Mars sauntered through his door


tulcha
Originally uploaded by kyooverse.
Before I forget to mention, Rye's folks, Rye and I went to Skagit Valley in order to look at the tulip and daffodil fields and take pictures. We also went to Deception Point and walked along the bridge and explored some... structure with a dead cat in it... that probably held cows or horses. Anyway, pictures await. We were SO TIRED (having gone to see Dina Martina and then going out to the Madison Pub where we drank like fishes. Goodbye to Pisces indeed.)

Anyway, see, comment, blah.

* - title is a quote from "Goodbye to Pisces" by Tori Amos, from The Bee Keeper.

posted by Ergane @ 4:05 PM 0 comments

Slaughter

Ok, I am not on-line as much these days and I am not watching TV even an iota of the way I used to, but... Is there public outcry regarding the Israelis completely bugging the fuck out and shooting missles at Palestine? Have they really lost their fucking mind AND NO ONE IS SAYING SHIT ABOUT IT? Surely someone is talking about fear of Brown people with a plan (or Hamas), someone is talking about this gross reaction formation to their own fears that Hamas won't "say" they renounce violence (is it just me or that you can "say" anything... also, the fact that Israel doesn't have to say it will renounce violence, which wouldn't have mattered because WHO didn't know they were going to use military force to back up their fear, anxiety and panic.)

Are we just gonna let Israel carry out what could only be interpreted as genocide against these people of color?

... I hate feeling so fucking help-/use-/worthless.

posted by Ergane @ 2:21 PM 0 comments

Saturday, April 08, 2006

a response to a father's talk of hybridity re: his son.

I would like to offer:

Even those of us who are in the US, who live as "B/black" (i.e. "black" as a signifier that points to both an ethnic *and* racial identity) are often hybrids (albeit of culture, but also blood) as well -- and some of us are "racial" hybrids that are never recognized because it is all reduced to "black" or that which marks us as people of African descent.

I mention this because it would be a mistake if, in this moment of having to take an active role in showing your son how to survive on this terrain, you paint us all as people without hybridity (what Reid-Pharr calls "metropolitian"), however I think B/black people, in a sense, are the very definition of hybridity. Before culture, look at blood. My known ancestry includes Haitian, Lumbee, Scots-Irish, as well as African. Also, my culture is a hybrid as well as I fully recognize what is African-American (Black) about my culture and what is white about it as well (via white supremacy). However, I am a part of other cultures that futher "complicate" my identity as a hybrid... the least of which being some form of African and Hindi spiritualities, but also being a gender deviant/transgendered person who can sometimes, "pass," a percieved man who loves men, even a person involved in an interracial relationship and semi-open relationship (-- there are rules and he doesn't want to be a party to it) -- I join different aspects of myself and my identity in ways that could make anyone's head spin!

But B/black people are more diverse, more various and to paint us as being without hybridity is to paint us with one brush and one color, ignoring what else is there.

To say your son is not like you is to deny the ways in which your son IS like you. How you, as a hybrid yourself by blood and by culture, can hold onto cultural purity and authenticity is *laughable*. Is symptomatic of this idea that there is some "pure" cultural or racial (I have to assume you are using them interchangably because you aren't making distinctions between "culture" and "race") expression that leaves out the fact that "race" is NOT real (although an experienced reality) and treats race as if it is indicative of culture which deadens the spirit of being a hybrid in the first place.

***

I am not sending it because I am old enough to know that sometimes, on certain topics, people feel I am just out of line -- and that is a-ok.

posted by Ergane @ 4:35 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

*start transmission*

I missed Utada Hikaru.

posted by Ergane @ 5:59 PM 1 comments

Don't be afraid to grow up (a response)

That's nothing.

Something is having someone who is clearly on crack having a crack attack of some kind and acting like a rat caught in a can sitting on people, being pulled by some strange supersonic string and just being all together freaky.

HE was kicked off.

What is it about darky anger that makes Seattlites so jumpy and mad and defensive?

Calling the cops because of a difference of opinion. *tsk*

I watched this white guy completely treat a B/black bus driver like he was a "boy" driving his "coach."

All in the eye, eh.

That said, all's ok in Seattle imho. I see more cops these days, but I don't worry about it because I realize, finally, there are far better bad asses that my cream puff ass and... *shrugs* ok, yay -- as long as they don't talk to me either.

There's a lot of suppressed rage is all and people get grumpy when it is cold for too long.

posted by Ergane @ 2:35 AM 0 comments

Monday, April 03, 2006

caretaking in radical expression


queer

I dyed my hair five times in one week
I dyed it red, white, plum, and silver.
On Friday I dyed it brown again.
I was on a quest.
"You look just like one of those fancy Polish chickens!"
That's what my brother said, a family man
on a family plan: one house, one wife, three kids.
"Just like a fancy Polish chicken!"
And yes, I was quite a show bird.
I call it my Circus Phase.

At Christmastime that chameleon year
I sat with my mother, in my doubtful drag,
sifting through her cedar chest.
I had been home three days and now
my mother didn't wince at my hair anymore:
dyed red and green for the season.
She pulled a small box from cedar scent,
sat it open on her lap, drawing out
the sum of her treasures:
baby bracelets spelling in infinitesimal beads
all of the names of her children,
twisted strings of plastic pearls,
rings her mother had worn,
rings she herself had won in courtings.

She then unearthed from under a mound
of braided strings, a small brooch.
Rhinestone, it glowed like one hundred flames,
kindling hope of diamonds in future days.
Saying nothing, she undid the clasp,
pushed the pin through the skin of my shirt.
Saying nothing, she snapped shut the pin,
pulled her hand away, as if I were suddenly
made of fire.

Assessing her work, she raised her eyes,
met my gaze a moment, and moved on,
told old jewel stories with every trinket upturned.
I listened, attentive, but kept looking down
at the sagging front of my thin shirt.
My mother had placed more than rhinestones
on my chest, more than a brooch.
She'd passed on fire in a web of glass and wire,
and though I wanted that new treasure,
sparkling on my skinny chest,
I did not know what to do with it,
with all of that burning.

- William Reichard, from A Faggots Lexicon

***

Yes, I could critique it, too. But I like it for sentiment and burning and searching -- not in that order.

posted by Ergane @ 9:31 AM 0 comments

Mooning Out (Lunacy)

A Lunar Return is when the transiting moon lines up with/passes over your natal moon. There are whole charts and stuff about it, but that is not why I am here. I am here to talk about my lunar return as a 12th house mooner.

My moon is at 0 degrees Gem. It is behind my ASC. This aspect, including their conjunction, makes for, what I consider a really sad person. *grins* You see, I want to hide how I am feeling, but I can't. I want to hide my duality and my yes/no processing, everything... I am one of those people who are best taken as given -- reading between my lines usually results in insulting me (... again, in some discourses... when I am flirting, I welcome reading between my thighs... err, lines. *grins* <-- see?).

Anyway, when the moon passed into Gemini, I felt it. Suddenly, all the care I send out into the world became a projection of all the care I was not giving myself. I kept needling my partner, "What's wrong? What's wrong? I feel some strange energy coming off you. What's going on?"

Eventually, I would come to realize I was in open spongeland -- this is my time of the month... when I feel everything and I am too scared to use that perception to be more interested in myself rather than everyone else.

Slowly, I turned my attention back to myself -- enacted the habits I have been consciously learning in order to make the best of what is coming next.

I made tea (Yogi's Peach DeTox) in my newest teapot (named Aka Ryu -- thanks Xandi -- I'll take pictures sometime soon...) and sat in this chair, turning my attention slowly inward. I knew I would be up for a while because I always become an insomniac around this time so, I started thinking about the things on my list I wasn't doing, the work I will myself to forget because it is easier to fret and worry about other people than the state of me, right?

*grins*

I feel like writing this post is holding me up from my bath with rock crystal salt... which means I am trying to not take care of me.

I have learned one of the best things for me when my moon returns, is to take inventory and invest in some self-care. In four days the moon will be at it's nadir and life always sucks around then. I am planning to help things not suck.

I am planning a whirlwind... but I have to convince myself to wind down first!

Um... yeah.

quentin ergane

posted by Ergane @ 7:38 AM 0 comments