all of a sudden I feel disgusting, dysphoric, hateful toward myself. I've never seen "myself" in the mirror, and as my body undergoes multiple slow metamorphoses, age and loss of active lifestyle and estrogen's glacial redistribution, what I see in the full-wall mirrors at the martial arts studio is some other nightmare, an unfamiliar stranger whose face is too like my father's, whose body is outside of the parameters I made uneasy peace with for so many years, if I just didn't think about it I'd be fine, if I just didn't look at it or draw attention to it then I'd be fine, avoid compliments and criticism as much as possible, indifferent and masking and horrid and still trying so hard to be happy

and as I close my eyes in a hot bath that can't contain me, what do I hear but Pinkerton's devil whisper, the album I can map so many of my youthful discomforts onto and that now I hear as such a transgender wail, tired of sex and so far away and I'm dumb she's (I'm) a lesbian, I thought I had found the one, and butterfly, every time I pin down what I think I want it slips away

I guess you're as real as me
maybe I can live with that

but I couldn't, I never did live with it, the ghost slips away and she was me, and I'm suddenly achingly sick of it all again, reliving all the living that was so hard because something about me just rubbed people the wrong way

and I get it

me too!!!!!

and I can endure it because I'm good at enduring but motherfuck I wish my life was aligned with any of my beliefs, any of my dreams, any of my wants and I'm trying and I'll keep trying

but we've made a nasty world and I have always known it even when I couldn't say its name

I don't want sex I just want tenderness
I don't want gender I want to feel weightless
I don't want to be hot I just want to want not
and be accepted and held and loved

I have enjoyed all the moments when I briefly felt real
I look forward to a few more if I can manage it

absence cannot be reconstructed
but it can be illuminated

and i'm lit the fuck up

This page from the Translator’s Introduction to Walter Benjamin’s “The Arcades Project” is extremely interesting, and activates my Mark Z. Danielewski Sense re: Only Revolutions BIG TIME

Unfortunately, I do not have the mental energy to explain. I can simply point at this and raise my eyebrows repeatedly. Mostly the second paragraph.

I also really appreciate “an uncanny sense of crisis and of security, of crisis in security.” “things were coming to seem more entirely material than ever and, at the same time , more spectral and estranged.” That’s a pretty accurate description of my life experience!

Anyway I wish I felt like explaining the Big Thoughts that happen when I read stuff like this. I don’t, and it also doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort. BUT OH WEL

[I can't remember if I've ever posted this. I used to write poems all the time; this fell out one morning and stayed lodged in my brain. I remembered it this morning, so you can read it if you'd like.]

And suddenly again how normal it is that everything's screaming green, that everytree's swaddled in mutebright leaves. Through the chart of glass or the impenetrable gas of that most fair, their shuffling and huffing is enticement and grace.

This is nowhere near enough, and leaves are allwhere near their ghosts, who folded and fell and ascended to the xylem hall of heaven — which is spring — or the winged stomach of heaven — which is on the move — or the downy grey fuzz of freshloam surl, earthy kids ready to roar slowly forth with tender shoots from stomped-on mounds.

The cat's claw churns the earth.
Inventured farmhands rake the weeds.
Being this lonely sure is hard work.

One of the great new rocks bands of this decade, BACK AT IT, get yourself some FUCKING ROCK AND ROLL with CHILL ASS VOCALS

buy it on bandcamp and support my little rock bubbies

I'm feeling unusually like "myself" right now, and am once again trying to activate whatever "myself" is!!!

In the spirit of constructive assertion, I'm gonna improvise some New Rules/Goals/Hopes!

I will not be afraid of what people say about my art!

I have become terrified over time of what people will say when I put art into the world in any medium. And not without reason! My own mother said I sounded "insane" after publishing a short essay in 2016, but luckily/complicatedly I realized by the end of that year that my family was not good for me, and cut them out of my life. HOWEVER, that's just one of many instances where eager little (and big) Nick published something and received outrageous negative responses. And I struggled to build enough of a "thick skin" to brush that stuff off, mostly because I was poor, unmedicated, and fucking suffering for years!!! Fuck you if you've ever been anything less than helpful when the tender shoots of my creativity have tried again and again to emerge from my scorched interior.

That probably doesn't apply to anybody who would read this (who even are you?) BUT, still I say to protect myself, fuck you! I am brilliant and insightful and funny and have a creative mind unlike any other and I've encountered so much fucking friction and setback in my life. Unstable footing for most of my adult life.

SO EVEN THOUGH THAT'S STILL THE CASE, I have identified that if I'm not writing, I'm dying. I exist primarily in my voice, for better or worse. And I've become my own jailer, just to avoid the possible whiplash of having an enjoyable time writing, posting it online somewhere, and having somebody say exactly the wrong thing to me. If it happens, I am resolving to respond with protective venom, rather than spending the next year going "were they right though? am I stupid/insane/annoying/ignorant/????"

Because the people I trust say I'm not. I tried to trust some of the wrong people for too long. If your family doesn't love you and treat you with dignity, get the fuck away from them. If randos don't understand your writing, they aren't the target audience.

(ASIDE: if you're being a fucking bigot though, you ARE wrong and should take criticism to heart. these rules do not apply to racists/bigots/terfs/conservatives of any stripe. y'all all gotta shut the fuck up and let the rest of us save the world and live in peace. you grew up wrong. I'm not sorry. get entirely out of the fucking way 😜)

Write without worrying about being ""CORRECT""!

This is a major hangup and inhibitor! Unfortunately for me, a lot of what I've wanted to write about are interpretive responses to other people's art. That means Opinions get involved, and people feel strongly about their things! Including me!

I made the mistake of couching that writing for a long time as "solving" or "explaining." Oops! That's a masculine form of assertion that I want to discard! Hugely important tweet I saw a couple years ago said something like, "When women make up something about a story they like, they call it Fanfiction. When men do the same, they call it Lore Analysis." And I have been so guilty of this!!! And it sucks! The thing that you can do as analysis is really cool and fun, but what I don't want to do anymore is assert that I've "figured it out" or "cracked the code." I was in that trap writing about House of Leaves, etc, a decade ago. The desire for correctness (born out of academic do-gooder training AND harmful family dynamics where my parents got very angry when their Correctness was questioned AND [...]) is unnecessary here. It literarily doesn't matter.

I have stuff I want to write about several topics, including Twin Peaks and Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Hell, I've got a book or two worth of interpretive connections I could still write about Mark Danielewski's books. But I haven't been able to DO it, or enjoy it, because of this specific form of fear about being received uncharitably.

SO, I intend to write more about these things, and I'm gonna start all of it with a disclaimer that it's all made up, probably wrong, and just for fun. For some reason I want to take myself seriously (a true desire for dignity and recognition built on familial disrespect, when I should have just been a fucking improv comic at age 18). OOPS! Even if I do take myself seriously, nobody else needs to know that! Play along, or go fuck yourself!

I guess I've gotten more cynical and harder-hearted in the last few years, but CAN YA BLAME ME? This shit's ridiculous but at least I'd like to enjoy myself, being inside my own mind, A LITTLE and if I have to construct somewhat unreasonable defenses, well I'm sure as shit not the only one!

But I'm not Jokerfied... I'm Harleyfied. 😎 Casting off the abusers, sure a little chaotic, but god damn it I'm trying!

SPEAKING OF WHICH:

I will be honest with and about myself!

I've dealt with an unbearable burden of self-loathing that's only increased since puberty. And SURE that includes plenty of true catastrophe and external sabotage — not to mention living in the Saw Movie Hellscape of the Untenable States of Ahfuck. Can you imagine if I'd been born in a country with fucking healthcare and a social safety net??? WOWWWWW

But anyway, oops turns out I'm trans! FUCK! Seriously, FUCK!!!!!!!! God damn it!!!!! I have ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS been utterly uncomfortable with masculinity, and chalked that up to being a nerd, sensitive, thoughtful in a way most men are allergic to. And I am those things. But ALSO OOPS nobody taught me that Transgender was even a thing growing up, and I was so busy dealing with Everything Else that I just put aside Gender as a thing. Other people had Gender; not me! It was always "a group of queer friends... and also Nick!"

So yeah this has been a huge issue for me for as long as I can remember, and LORD did I do a lot of work to ignore it, and myself! But I had a series of events in late 2019 that destroyed my entire life as it existed before, and that included a deep moment of connection with a trans friend where I went, "Uh oh!" And then everything blew up, then covid kicked off, and I couldn't really even afford to pay rent for a couple years. Fuck!!!

So anyway I got a better-paying job about 2 years ago, started talking to a counselor specializing in Gender, and reading about other people's experiences. And was immediately like, "Ah shit ah hell, now I gotta deal with THIS TOO????" and the answer is yes.

Guess what else? A few years ago I started taking antidepressants. WOW, IT'S COOL TO WANT TO LIVE! I got diagnosed with ADHD and started treatment for that about 9 months ago. WOW, I LOVE BEING ABLE TO DO TASKS! And then I started estrogen in March. WOW, FEELS PRETTY COOL AND ALSO COMPLICATED! And then I took some diagnostic tests and tested to be pretty firmly on the autistic spectrum! WOW, THAT EXPLAINS A FEW THINGS!

So here's the thing: my dumbfuck family and this cursed nation kept me from getting tested for any of this stuff until my 30s. No help, no accommodations, no understanding! Just so many people, from as early as I can remember, calling me every derogatory word for being queer, hyperactive, disorganized, and neurodivergent! I was 7 years old and people lobbed "gay" and other slurs at me because I wasn't sufficiently masculine. "But I'm not attracted to boys, so that can't be right," thought every trans lesbian egg ever, including me! Everyone I've ever met has looked at me at some point and said, "You are one of the strangest people I've ever met," and I just shrug and laugh and make it a joke because

HUMOR
IS
MY
MASK

And I managed to goof my way through life, struggling so hard to be "functional", while constantly running up against difficulty after difficulty. Especially around communication, where I learned to be so careful and that's good sometimes but also: SO FUCKING EXHAUSTING

SO GUESS WHAT FUCKERS

We got ourselves another autistic adhd trans lesbian computer programmer over here, HELLOOOOO, I dunno if I wanna change my name some day but you can use she/her pronouns about me IF YOU WANT and otherwise WHATEVER WE'LL SEE

and honestly I'd just like to ask for your help and love and accommodation because the last few years have been so hard on me and being social during all of this shit has just been a nightmare so much of the time. All of these "new rules" are related: I have not felt SAFE or HAPPY being MYSELF and while being open doesn't necessarily increase my SAFETY in this FUCKED UP STUPID WORLD OF MILITANT TERF DUNCES AND HEARTLESS FUCKS, I've at least

GOT
TO
BE
REAL

And if you don't like it, LITERALLY BYEEEEEEEEE

It's all made up and the points don't matter! I just want to enjoy what's left of the improvisation

i'm a genius, i'm a idot, i'm a dynamo, i'm barely functioning, i'm a starbeam, i'm a sweat-starved desert plant always wondering why they made the world so thirsty and why no god wanted me to bloom

i'm hilarious, i'm unbearable, i'm shedding yet another, i'm buried alive, i'm a three-year sunray smiling down on one more barren rock, wondering where all the people went, I knew them when I was only seven minutes old

i think poetry is stupid, it's my favorite thing, i'm the cork suffocating the teeny ship, i'm the howlwind crooning through another craggy afternoon, i'm verified, i'm illegal in an increasing number of states, i'm resentful of having been born in an age where there's medicine enough to have saved me from calamity but no cure for dragons

i'm the ice cracked by a footstep, i'm so hungry for love, i'm the coral watching killer waves refuse support groups, i'm literally begging, i'm an innovative paper that decides whether your words deserve to survive and i will evaporate every last bastard cry

i'm

i'm scurrying under the fridge, i'm the brief bloom of youth, i'm the tornado picking and choosing my favorite flavor of house from a gift-wrapped city, i'm not even an office i'm just a felt-stapled partition and i only get to see the backs of thumb-tacked baby photos

i'm a new kind of tired. i'm the fourth smokestack, just for show. the world would look wrong without me. i'm wondering how much better if we didn't keep losing our best to despair. i'm bawling. we're still here

Time for two great songs that feel fantastic to scream along with, even when I'm having a nice day (like today)!

PUP — "THE COAST"

NOW YOU KNOW
WHAT'S EATING ME

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

PUP — "OLD WOUNDS"

YOU KNOW I'VE NEVER BEEN GOOD AT ANYTHING
EXCEPT FOR FUCKING UP AND RUINING EVERYTHING
AND I'M SICK OF IT!
IT'S SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING!

PUP — "Can't Win"

I'm feelin' pretty good right now, but I know these feelings too well. I really appreciate how much this album blasts forward into the fun zone, while capturing and redirecting all the vicious self-recrimination of the depressed and impoverished. The whole album is one of the most constructively cathartic I've ever heard.

GOOD JOB, PUP