Today I worked for a friend of mine doing light construction-- mason tending, tile grouting, fence mending, and other such fun labors. It's hard work, but it's pleasant in a way. I'm sure it helped that I had a protein shake before I went in and I kept myself hydrated all day. My hands ache a little and I definitely blistered one of them but other than that I had a great workout. When I came home Tina saw me coming up the walk and said I looked very masculine. I said "I'm exhausted and covered in filth." She said "Oh, yeah, that must be it." :)

I work again on Tuesday. Tomorrow I rest.

So... found my old journal... this is getting ridiculous...

It must be because it's May 25th. Eris is messing with my head.

A penis is a terrible thing to lose. Which is why it's a good thing I didn't lose mine, just temporarily misplaced it for a really long time. Now if only I can find my actual, physical journal...

...and predictably enough I can't get to sleep.

I've been following D around, infuriatingly fixing everything he does wrong. Can't leave that light on. Nope, that's a fluourescent; you don't turn that one on and off because it uses as much energy turning on as it does in an hour of steady use. Don't leave the AC on with the door open. If it's too hot to turn the AC off you can't leave the door open. The dryer's too loud and I'm trying to sleep. Jeezus.

Thing is, I know what my problem is. I'm just adapting to having one more person in the house, and feeling like my space is being infringed on. This makes me extra sensitive to everything D does, because I'm conscious of him. Like Inez and Garcin in No Exit. I'll calm down in a few days, once I adapt. But right now I'm so conscious of the extra presence, and this is making me worry so much about stupid things like the steadily mounting electric bill, that I can't sleep. After I made him cut off the dryer so I could.

This makes me worry about being an asshole, and that makes it harder to sleep.

I'm gonna go meditate now. Hopefully I can speed up the adaption process a little. I'll explain things in the morning and apologize, again.

I'm not terribly sure why, but I created a guestbook and a forum for this blog. It's probably some kind of cry for help.

I found a new screensaver today. It's called Hotel Magritte, and it's a series of interconnected rooms in surrealist style.

It made me think about my life.

So I'm supposed to be figuring out my identity now. Taking apart the bits of me and putting them back together in various ways, until I found out which way I like best and what sort of story I want to tell about the resulting collage. But there's no end to the layers of me, like there's no end to the randomly generated rooms in this semi-virtual hotel. Each layer I peel away, examine microscopically, and discard or rearrange, represents only another fiction. Or rather, not fiction...

Superficial is a term of relative positionality. Skin is superficial to muscle, muscle is superficial to bone. Some muscles are deep to bone, and some internal organs are superficial to others. The layer of my persona which is concerned about physical appearance is superficial to the layer of my persona which contains my gender identity. The layer of my persona which contains my gender identity is superficial to... what? the real me? I'm no longer under the illusion that there's a real me to find; my identity is constructed out of all these layers and their interactions. My bones are no more the real me than the muscle and skin above them, or the internal organs below them. No, I have to wait for the scalpel to reveal whatever is deep to my gender identity. And that takes a pretty extensive exploratory surgery.

Wandering these rooms of my mind. A nice, friendly image. It's not so bloodless, so clean, as all that. I'm taking a scalpel to myself intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. My friends, if you wonder why I'm sometimes snappish, or why I disturb your emotional rollercoasters by collision with my own, remember I'm required for my survival right now to dissect myself. Layer by layer, I'm bound to hit a nerve. I had to get under my politeness to the anger I was keeping hidden for a long time, and I wasn't always successfully able to wrestle that anger out of the way without splattering innocent bystanders. Now I know that anger is not some inner core of rage; just an irritation, scar tissue, the result of an unfortunate conflict of my layers. I know its relative positionality. I understand where it is. That's something.

I'd like to thank the people who love me enough to stick around in the surgical theater and watch while I perform this delicate operation. You're all my colleagues. Even if you haven't done this particular kind of surgery before, you know what it's like to take the scalpel to yourself in similar ways. You know the general warning signs, and if the patient needs a shot of adrenaline or another dose of anaesthetic, you can alert me to that fact just in case I'm distracted, caught between the layers of myself for a time. It takes a strong stomach, of course. Surgery is beautiful in a way, but that doesn't mean it's always pretty.

Court-Martial: Soldier Who Refused to Return Is Found Guilty of Desertion

Why is this man getting the same punishment for choosing to do no harm to anyone as another is getting for committing reprehensible acts of degradation and torture which even Rumsfeld found it prudent to describe as "inhumane"?

Verily and Forsooth it hath been a few weeks since last I did post. I've finished up my work for the semester, and now I turn my thoughts to summer and what I must get done. Firstly I must yea verily take the car to my parents for (hopefully minor) brake surgery. Then I will be getting jobs with Will, painting houses. Lo and behold, this will cause me to be possessed of some money, I hope. With this money I will begin buying books for my thesis and for the graphic novel project I will soon be working on (no, Zan, I haven't forgotten). I must study Latin and German and French, look into getting a correspondence course in some ancient language (perhaps Egyptian; perhaps Akkadian or similar), and take my GRE at some point relatively soon. I must clean my room, begin working out, and sort out the meaning behind last night's whiny angst session.

Yes, whiny angst session. Looking back at the four pages of text I filled up in my journal makes me laugh a little. If you have allergies to angst then please do not read the following quotes:

"I've never been this fixated on my body before. What is it? Did that disaster with J make me think I was a failure as woman? Was I exposed to the toxic effects of gay slash fiction at a too-tender age? What in the nine hells is wrong with me?"

"I love myself. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonnit, people like me. My interior is at one with my exterior. My spirit is at one with this bullshit I'm spouting. Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth."

All this was just triggered by the realization that if I do decide to transition, nobody can guarantee I'll look like what I want to look like, during or after. Wah. I might be an ugly boy. So what? I can't live if I'm not pretty? If it would fix the attendant psychological problems, couldn't I live with a pot-belly and a hairy back?

Tucker's Resplendent Tree pulled me out of it. Go visit this site. There's a lot of good stuff there, stuff that makes a lot of sense.

Had a very freudian dream last night-- I was swimming in a river with Fledermaus, in my boxers, and dare I note that the river was full of all kinds of life, shining and clear and generally lovely? and he brought up how sad it is that some people hate rivers, and actively seek to despoil, pollute, dam, and destroy them. Yes, I said. But you should realize that some people who seem to hate rivers have good reason for disliking this particular one. You see, this river is manmade-- it only exists because a natural river somewhere upstream was dammed. Yes, Selkie said from the shore, dangling her toes in the water. I heard about that at FCAN. She was sad because she couldn't go swimming too. I believe Hobobob was there as well behind her, silent in the background, fully clothed and not looking at all eager to get wet.

Today's gender: Mostly androgyne, with scattered Byrony, and a slight chance of invertedness towards late afternoon. Tomorrow's outlook: Partially male with a 50% chance of Oscar Wilde.

Something I wrote recently:

Spend too much time exposed and you scorch.
The outer layer of myself's
roasted red, and so I
peel myself layer by layer--
disgusting? you look away
oh, it's not healthy to peel too much skin off, you say
but I itch
and I ache
and I burn
until I rid myself of that brittle layer of skin
and submit to the sun the me that's underneath
red and raw.
Then again I feel too exposed
nude in your sight,
but you can't see it
does the sun see what it scorches?
--so, layer by layer
I peel myself free--
under my skin of genderlessness,
my false femininity.
Under my false femininity,
mask of the masculine.
Under the mask of the masculine,
androgyny so newly naked
and already I ache to expose
what lies under that.
And it hurts to be so bare
naked before your blind raking gaze
which just burns me black and crackling
all over again and
under that pain I must
peel a new layer away--
I'm getting smaller and smaller now.
At the end, when nothing's left
will I somehow be free?

I search my skin for scars,
and scars are all I see.
Scars I got that I never wanted--
Scars I might never get that I need.