Moving On At The End Of Daylight Savings Time

Tonight--or, more precisely, at two o'clock tomorrow morning--Daylight Savings Time ends.  That means the clocks are turned back an hour.


That is particularly ironic for me.  As I have described in earlier posts, various parts of my life are moving forward, whether or not as a result of my doing.  And, as I have also described, I do not have the option of going back, even if I wanted to do such a thing.


My working life, if nothing else, is making that abundantly clear.  I am teaching in two places where nobody --at least, nobody who had any authority to interview or schedule me--knew me.  And, save for one prof at the technical institute who knew me from long ago, I have not talked about my past with anyone.  And I didn't talk about my transition with him:  He seemed to know more or less what I did, and he has only a vague memory of the person who once shared a desk with him at John Jay College, where I taught just after I finished graduate school.  So much has passed since then!


Meanwhile, something even stranger is happening at my main job.  It's as if people are moving forward in my life--my previous life, that is--without me in it.  What's even stranger is that I'm not upset with them because, really, I don't have the choice--no, the luxury--of doing so.   Yes, I did suggest that the college could use an LGBT organization (The college is part of a university that includes twenty other colleges and is the only college among them that doesn't have an LGBT organization.)  and volunteered to do the work to organize, and enlist support, for it.  The college's administration thought it "too controversial" (What city are we in?  What century?) and not only nixed the idea, but cast aspersions on me for suggesting it.  Now they're willing to support other profs in doing it, and I really am not interested in it now.  I don't know what I'd say if those profs approached me to work with them on it.  


It's not a matter of "sour grapes."  Rather, I have come to realize that the college is so decidedly un-progressive in its attitude toward LGBT people, and much else.  So, I have to wonder just how much the college administration is willing to support those profs who are talking about starting an organization.  And, quite frankly, my interests and energies are moving in other directions.  I'm finding that there's not much, if anything, I can do about that.


The same holds true about a hip-hop institute I suggested while I was teaching a course in the poetics and rhetoric of that art-form.  Other profs are probably going to run with it; they can have it because, even though I suggested it, I feel that the idea is not mine anymore.  Or, at least, I don't feel as if I have a place in it.


On the other hand, at the technical institute and at the other college, I really don't feel any compulsion--for now, anyway--to do more than to teach and be a supportive presence for whoever may need or want it.  I don't yet know whether there are any "in" or "out" groups in either place, and if there are, I may not need to know, at least not yet.  In contrast, I now realize that at my main job, even though I have been involved in two committees and a number of other activities, and gained respect for my teaching, I was never one of the "cool kids," if you will.  And, what I learned is that it's the sort of place in which that's exactly what you have to be, or become.  You know whether or not that has happened if you are part of a clique.  I'm not, and that's why I actually feel more like an outsider at that college than I did on the day I started there almost six years ago.


As I describe all of those things, they already feel like part of the past and are unchangeable in the same way. You don't grow up by trying to change your childhood; you use what you can from it to help you move forward.  There are times when that college feels like as much a part of my past as junior high school, to which I have compared the college.  (I've also compared it to a juvenile detention center, as the power relationships operate in almost exactly the same way as those among detained adolescents.)  Some people there are proceeding without me; I am moving in the direction in which I need to move.


They say the fall is a time of change.  Indeed it is.  The end of Daylight Savings Time is part of it.

Autumn Wind

The sun disappeared behind, then reappeared from, clouds that streamed across a sky in which the gray of this morning's rain turned almost instantaneously into the crisp blue of autumn, then took on, almost as quickly, the first orange tinges of a sun ready to set.

Only the wind moved faster than that sky. And it was this day's only constant.

It was the classic autumn wind, a prelude to the autumn dusk. Perhaps I will remember this day in another year, as that wind is the brush and the dusk is the paint of recollection.

Nothing makes me feel more strongly that a day has passed and I am another day older--though, perhaps, richer in spirit--than having moved through and with that wind and arrived at that autumn dusk.

So why is it such a struggle for me to find the language for this day, for this feeling I now have? Perhaps it is because none of what I have experienced today--in fact, for some time now--is a repetition of a recollection. What I no longer experience is what I now call the Eternal Present: when every moment is simply a replay of one that came before rather than a segment of a progression.

People who live in the Eternal Present, of course, do not call it that. If they're aware of their situation at all, they might describe their days and lives as a cycle of "same shit, different day." Or "same shit, different year." A Buddhist might call it, "same shit, different lifetime." Then again, I don't think a Buddhist would say that because, it seems to me, that a Buddhist wouldn't think that way.

That's because "being in the moment"--which every Buddhist I know talks about--seems, at least to me, to be the exact opposite of The Eternal Present. Being in the moment means, as I understand it, being present and accountable for whatever is in your life at the moment. On the other hand, adherence to The Eternal Present prevents people from being present in the moment--which is to say their own lives-- for it implies that things will be as they have been, whether or not people do anything differently.

This day's sky and wind and sun were parts of a moment that is one of a train of many others that are different, in almost imperceptibly subtle ways, from the ones that preceded and the ones that will follow it. They may be conduits of memory, and they may become memories for me. But that doesn't mean that they will dictate what I will experience the next time I see the wind turning moving through an autumn day into the dusk.

Tonight my memory is of the beauty of that sky and the way the sun reflected in my eyes and the wind rippled against my skin.They are wonderful, but tomorrow I will wake to something different, even if it is a reflection of the same sun and an echo of the same wind in the same sky.

I Can See Clearly Now

Tonight is one of those really classic early autumn nights, even if it's a bit chilly for this time of year. The air is crisp, almost brisk, and the sky is clear. In fact, it is on nights like these that one can truly call the sky "clear": On winter nights, pinpricks of light punctuate grow brighter against the dark and the cold: Chiaroscuro is not the same thing as clarity.

But on a night like this can't be anything but clear. The moon and the stars are almost pure light, and everything under them doesn't only reflect that light; it radiates the soft glow of that light.

Nights on which rain doesn't fall will become clearer all through the fall, until around Thanksgiving or so. Then the light of the stars and moon will begin to freeze in place and will remain static, like portraits of memory.

But for now the sky can't be anything but clear, as it is on such an early-fall night.

It was around this time of the year--I was fourteen, if I recall correctly-- I first heard Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now", it didn't seem odd--in some way I couldn't explain--that the song, in Nash's beautiful rendition, came out when it did. And every time I heard it thereafter, I felt some kind of solace every time I heard it.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there's nothin' but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin' but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Or hope, anyway. As you can imagine, my struggle with my gender identity and sexuality was particularly fierce. I was on the wrestled and played soccer for my school. I hoped that doing such things, and taking extra science courses and mechanical drawing as an elective, would somehow make me more masculine. But the boys on those teams--and, I suspect, my coaches--knew that no such thing was happening. They would make me run wind sprints long after the other boys were finished. The good news was that I got into really good shape--in body, anyway.

Even when I won a match or made a good play, other boys would taunt me. They wouldn't call me "faggot," "queer" or any other derogatory names. Rather, they'd point out, in a mocking way, some girl who'd developed or sexy teacher and coax, in an even more mocking way, that they'd tell that girl or teacher that I had the "hots" for them.

Of course, they thought I was gay. Later, I would identify myself in that way only because I wasn't attracted to women in the same way as other guys. Then again, I wasn't attracted to men in the same way as gays I knew.

Those pinpricks of clarity would remain frozen in the recesses of my mind. I had no way of articulating what I felt--at least not to other people, as most people thought, as I did, that gay men were all "queens" and transsexuals were at least vaguely skeevy. Then again, the only trannies I knew about were Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards and tranny hookers.

So, while I could viscerally feel my own desires, my lack of a language for them left me unable to see the meaning of them more clearly. That would take many, many more years.

At least I knew that it would be all about seeing clearly, seeing all the obstacles in my way. Hearing the song would give me hope for that; sometimes I had nothing more than a wish. But at least the points of light were there, even if the sky wasn't clear enough for them to shine on me,or I simply wasn't looking at them.

Tonight I looked at the clear fall sky.