Check out my latest on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justine-valinotti/the-endless-season_b_7015404.html
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
08 April 2015
03 January 2013
Palais d'Hiver
This photo from Let's Go Ride A Bike made me think of something I wrote some years ago:
Palais d'Hiver
Wind:
dry whispers
in a house
where I
no longer
live.
23 March 2010
The Trauma of The Beginning of Spring
Today everybody looked tired. I thought I might've been projecting, but a few co-workers told me, without my asking or prompting, that they indeed were as tired as I thought they were.
Maybe it had something to do with the rain, which started falling yesterday morning. It hasn't been particularly heavy, but it's been dreary. Although temperatures have been mild, the sort of rain we've had doesn't leave people with the sense that spring is on its way, much less present.
I'm starting to worry about something. Today I bumped into the head of the office of academic advisement, a very nice professor of social work and three Spanish professors who indulge my terrible accent when I speak their language. I hadn't seen any of them in some time, and they were all very friendly to me. In fact, the Spanish profs--all female, two of whom are, as best as I can tell, straight--embraced me warmly. Somehow, though, I felt lonelier after seeing them, as well as the social work prof and the director of advisement.
Lately, I notice that whenever I'm at the college and not in the classroom, or otherwise working with students, I feel like a stone in an ocean. Seeing the people I saw today made me realize that so much has passed and, in some way, I am a different person now because of it. It's almost as if they were talking to someone who doesn't exist anymore. In a very real sense, he doesn't. Nor does she: the one who followed him and preceded me.
Some people are committing all sorts of petty treachery. Others, I think, have tried to be friendly or at least have made gestures toward that. Somehow they are more more alienating than the ones who are hostile or treacherous.
Maybe I'm suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Memories bubble to the surface and I don't want to talk to other people, even if they ask how I'm doing. If I were going to tell the truth, I'd say that during the past couple of days, all I can think about are the people who were once in my life but are gone from this life. They were friends, lovers and relatives who, in one way or another, had to deal with their own sorts of pain, as I had to deal with mine.
In my case, I didn't know how much pain I was in until I wasn't in it anymore. That's something I don't expect most people to understand. My old social worker and therapist, on the other hand, probably would have understood. In fact, they both said that the experience of being in the closet, not to mention the prejudice and sometimes violence we experience and internalize, is a kind of trauma. And in that sense, they said, helping LGBT people is often like helping trauma victims.
It's the beginning of spring. But the harshness of winter is neither so far in the past nor from the surface. Or so it seems.
Maybe it had something to do with the rain, which started falling yesterday morning. It hasn't been particularly heavy, but it's been dreary. Although temperatures have been mild, the sort of rain we've had doesn't leave people with the sense that spring is on its way, much less present.
I'm starting to worry about something. Today I bumped into the head of the office of academic advisement, a very nice professor of social work and three Spanish professors who indulge my terrible accent when I speak their language. I hadn't seen any of them in some time, and they were all very friendly to me. In fact, the Spanish profs--all female, two of whom are, as best as I can tell, straight--embraced me warmly. Somehow, though, I felt lonelier after seeing them, as well as the social work prof and the director of advisement.
Lately, I notice that whenever I'm at the college and not in the classroom, or otherwise working with students, I feel like a stone in an ocean. Seeing the people I saw today made me realize that so much has passed and, in some way, I am a different person now because of it. It's almost as if they were talking to someone who doesn't exist anymore. In a very real sense, he doesn't. Nor does she: the one who followed him and preceded me.
Some people are committing all sorts of petty treachery. Others, I think, have tried to be friendly or at least have made gestures toward that. Somehow they are more more alienating than the ones who are hostile or treacherous.
Maybe I'm suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Memories bubble to the surface and I don't want to talk to other people, even if they ask how I'm doing. If I were going to tell the truth, I'd say that during the past couple of days, all I can think about are the people who were once in my life but are gone from this life. They were friends, lovers and relatives who, in one way or another, had to deal with their own sorts of pain, as I had to deal with mine.
In my case, I didn't know how much pain I was in until I wasn't in it anymore. That's something I don't expect most people to understand. My old social worker and therapist, on the other hand, probably would have understood. In fact, they both said that the experience of being in the closet, not to mention the prejudice and sometimes violence we experience and internalize, is a kind of trauma. And in that sense, they said, helping LGBT people is often like helping trauma victims.
It's the beginning of spring. But the harshness of winter is neither so far in the past nor from the surface. Or so it seems.
13 February 2010
Seasonal Blues
So why am I whining about this winter? Well, I want to start riding my bike more regularly. But I also am hoping to meet some of my neighbors. I now realize that one of the reasons why I was able to make friends fairly readily on my old block was that I moved there in August, when people were out and about. I met Millie as I was moving in; I would meet Toni not long after that and Tami a bit later on. On the other hand, I moved into the place where I'm living now on the day after Thanksgiving--just as winter was beginning, really. It seemed to have rained for about two weeks nonstop after my move; then it got cold and gray. And snow followed. People tend not to be outdoors much at times like that; hence, it's harder to meet people.
Plus, even though I know I should move on and that I will always have her as a friend, it's hard to imagine meeting anyone who'll be the kind of friend she's been to me. Then again, I'm a different person from the one who met her.
Even though I had to move from my old place under unhappy circumstances, I have very good and intense memories of the place, and that block. So many important and happy things in my life happened while I was living there.
Then again, I've been here for a little more than two months. I spent more than four years in the old place, and seven on that block. Maybe I just need more time here.
29 December 2009
My Bikes And My Cats, As I'm Healing On The Coldest Day Of The Year
You've heard the old joke: "It's so cold the politicians have their hands in their own pockets." Perhaps we could update it by substituting "hedge fund managers" for "politicians." Anyway, that's how cold it felt today. As the weather forecasters promised, it was indeed about 25 degrees colder (on the Farenheit scale) and the wind blew about 25 MPH harder than what we experienced yesterday.
Sometimes I think cats know when it's cold outside even if the houses in which they're living are warm. It's as if felines have internal almanacs and thermometers. At least, all of the cats I've had seem to have been that way: They've curled up with me more at times like this than during more temperate days. It's no surprise, then, that Charlie is curled up on my left side and Max is on my right.
I went out briefly today. When I came back, I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. My face was even redder than it would have been if I'd spent the day out in the sun! Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with the pain and other after-effects of a sunburn.
Oddly enough, I started to think about bike riding. I haven't done any since Thanksgiving. I didn't want to ride today, but I was thinking that I'd like to get on my bike again soon. That big, ugly bruise and the swelling are all but gone now, and so is the pain from that mishap I had the day before Thanksgiving. On each of the rides I took last month, I adjusted the saddle position a little bit. I suspect that I'll have to ride some more before I find the "right" position for me. Before the surgery, that's what I had to do any time I got a new bike. (Well, OK, my "new" bikes weren't always new. Nor is the old Raleigh three-speed I bought last month.) Now I have a new body--or part of my body is new, sort of, anyway.
Filigree has suggested that I would want to ride in a more upright position. Actually, the three-speed is designed to be ridden in a more upright position than either of my Mercians. But I don't intend to ride it for long distances, which I can't imagine doing in a completely upright position. I doubt that I'll swap my road bike handlebars for cruisers, but I may experiment with the position of them. The nice thing about road bars is that they offer a variety of hand positions, so you can go "aero" for speed or when you're pedaling into the wind and slide upward a bit more when the going is a little easier, or when you want to go easier.
I don't think I'll be riding to work when I start teaching my winter session class next week. But I hope that some time early in the spring semester, I'll be able to do that. I was getting tired of having to ride the trains and buses. I haven't had to do any of that in a week. But next week, I'll be on the subway once again. Actually, I will take the train tomorrow, when I meet Bruce for lunch.
At least I don't feel bad about that, in a way: The day will start off cold and end with rain and/or snow, according to the forecasts. Time was when I would have biked in such conditions. But the times, they are a-chaingin', as Bob Dylan sang. And I'm sure they will by the next time I get on a bike.
22 December 2009
Learning About The Cold
Ever since I started taking hormones, I feel the cold more than I used to. Not only do I sense it more; it seems to have a sharper edge to it.
The cold today is different from the cold one experiences, say, in Paris. There, it's the moisture rather than the wind that bears the cold. So, instead of piercing or slicing its way into the skin, the European cold seeps through every pore and orifice and seems to deposit itself, as if in layers, in the body.
Since I started my transition, I've been to Europe once--in the summertime. So I don't yet know whether, and how, the cold weather over there would feel differently from how it felt to me when I was full of testosterone (and, in my youth, beer or wine--or sometimes even stronger stuff!).
One thing I know is that over there, they don't see a whole lot of sunshine during the winter. The sort of day we had today--what someone, I forget whom, used to call C-cubed (clear, cold and crisp)--is unusual there. The gray layers of clouds mirror the cumulus stratified chill that builds in one's bones through those winter days in northern Europe. And, if you're not accustomed to it, you feel as if the cold will never leave. Those who are accustomed to experiencing it know that one day it will leave--with the season, or with one's own life.
Thinking about the cold, and the different kinds of cold, has brought back a memory of Cori. Until now, I hadn't thought about her today. It wasn't as though I was trying to forget her: After all, if you try to forget something, it's too late.
Anyway...This is the anniversary of her suicide. If the person that I am now could go back in time for her, I'd do everything I can to get her to see what I know now: That her depression, as bad as it was, and as all-permeating as it seemed to be, would be gone one day. And she wouldn't have had to die in order for that to happen.
Of course, that was something I didn't know at the time--and, truth be told, I don't think I could have understood even if the most empathetic soul showed me what I've just described. I felt the same way she did about her depression: It had permeated every atom of her being and seemed as if it would stay forever.
We had the same sort of conflict over our gender identities. We thought we could resolve it by doing all the things guys did, by wearing the "right" clothes and so forth. But the coldness and grayness just seeped deeper into our beings and pushed out any sunshine and warmth.
That was why she called me on the last night of her life, and why I went over to her place. I knew just how she felt even though I was years--decades--away from describing it to any other human being. I tried to keep it at bay, confined to some part of me I hoped I would never need to access. But of course, over the years, the cold and grayness just drew tighter around my being. I did not believe that there was an end to that seemingly-eternal winter of grayness and cold.
Now, of course, I have seen an end, and have seen how the cycle can begin all over again. Cori is long gone, so all I can do is learn from my experience and help others.
The cold and the grayness end, at least for a season. So does the wind.
15 November 2008
The Fifteenth
It's rained through most of the day. The sun put in one of those appearances it makes when it's in the center of the storm, then the sky grew darker and heavier with the rain that resumed.
If this day were colder, it would have felt like the fifteenth of November. But this day nonetheless looked the part, with the sky I've mentioned and leaves that a week or two ago fluttered and swirled red and gold in the autumn breeze but were, today, brown and whipped about into brittleness by the seemingly capricious wind.
As warm as this day was--The temperature reached 69 degrees F, according to the weather report--it was unmistakably a prelude to winter. Even when the sun appeared, it did not light up the sky as it did even a few days ago. Rather, it--and all of the light of this day--seemed to be little more than a truce with darkness. And the cold.
Gertrude Stein once said of T.S. Eliot, "He looks like the Fifteenth of November." Whatever Fifteenth she was talking about must have looked like this one, for as warm as today was, it was an uncanny spiritual reflection of the poet who was forgiven (at least by me!) many sins for having written "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
I grow old...I grow old..
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
The fifteenth of November is definitely a "precipice" date. You cannot pretend that you have just entered the fall; summer is a rather distant memory. And what are memories but the fictions our minds write for us?
And that is exactly the reason why people--I include myself, through most of my life--hold on to memories for dear life, sometimes at the cost of our own lives. I often feel that is the reason why people vote for reactionary politicians--or, worse, re-elect them, as they did with George W. Bush. (I can say "they" because I didn't vote for either of his terms.) Everyone wants to return to the Garden, whether of Eden of the Finzi-Continis, whether or not it actually existed.
On September 11th, everyone wished it was the 10th, or even a date before that. I've had Fourths of July (my birthday) when I wished it was the third, and any number of other dates I wished hadn't come to pass mainly because of the uncertainty that lay before them.
And on the fifteenth of November in 2003, Mom and Dad probably were wishing that it was the fourteenth. I'm sure they felt that way for many, many days afterward. Sometimes I did, too. Sometimes I wished for days even earlier than the fourteenth of that year, or an earlier year than that one.
Five years ago today, I came out to Mom and Dad. I didn't expect it to be easy for either of them: They knew, as well as I did, that we were entering a new and unsettled season in our relationship and in our lives. None of us knew what to expect, really: All I had was the hope that whatever I would have to endure in my transition would lead me to the happiness and spiritual fulfillment that had always eluded me, no matter how many people loved me and how many good things I did.
Even in all that uncertainty, though, I could sense that in some way they--my mother, at any rate--felt a sort of relief. For her--and for my father, too, although he did not express it overtly--my life finally made sense to them. I know it did for me, for the first time. All those relationships that didn't work--because they couldn't. The alcohol and drug abuse. The self-loathing. The things I started and never followed through. Of course. My mother said as much: "You had to spend so much energy fighting yourself."
For the first few months that followed, Mom, as compassionate as she was, seemed to feel anger that she couldn't quite place: Sometimes she was upset with me; other times she was upset with herself. Once she realized that it wasn't her "fault" that I am who I am, she chided herself for not knowing more and learning more quickly than she did. "I'm really trying to understand. Really I am."
"I know you are. And I'm not going to ask anything else of you. After all, it took me 40 years to figure it out."
I don't know how many times we had that exchange. But I also can't remember the last time we had it. The funny thing is that she had no idea of just how well she understood what I'd gone through, was going through and what I always wanted. I guess it's like that with the people who help you the most: They don't always realize what they've done for you.
The thing she didn't realize then, and perhaps she realizes now, is that she really was doing the best she could do, of herself and for me. And that I wasn't going to give up on her, any more than she would give up on me.
One thing never changed: We talked to each other every weekend, sometimes for an hour or more, by phone.
During those months that followed my "coming out," Dad was more enigmatic: He would send little gifts, such as pendants. to me but we'd barely talk at all. According to Mom, he also didn't want me to come down for a visit because there were friends and neighbors of theirs who knew me as Nick, and who knew how they'd react to me now?
But about a year ago, I noticed that I was talking more with him, though not nearly as much as with Mom. Still, it was an improvement from the previous three years. In fact, I'd say that we were--and are--talking to each other more than we did when we were living in the same house. He even congratulated me when I said I was seeing Dominick.
And he even took me shopping when I was visiting them in August. I never would have predicted anything like that. Yet in some way, it seems entirely "in character" for him.
Does he still sometimes wish I could be Nick, his namesake? Does Mom wish I could have been one of those eldest sons who makes his mother proud and who would have given her a grandchild who would probably be in, or getting ready to go to, college about now? Do they wish I could have pursued the careers, the lifestyles or anything else they had envisioned for me? I'm sure they always will. But they know they can no more wish that son into existence than I could be him. Actually, now that I think of it, I think they always knew that. Of course it would have been a more certain, and easier, road for them--and probably for me, too--had I been able to be that person they thought, or hoped, they had brought into this world.
They stayed with me on the Fifteenth of November, and the days that have followed. I could not have asked for any more. Out of the uncertainty has come joy that I never knew existed. And, I hope, that for them, a flower of that changing of the season is the understanding that while I may have become something they never could have envisioned, that I also love them in ways none of us could have understood on the fourteenth. Because I was honest with them, for the first time in my life, on the fifteenth.
If this day were colder, it would have felt like the fifteenth of November. But this day nonetheless looked the part, with the sky I've mentioned and leaves that a week or two ago fluttered and swirled red and gold in the autumn breeze but were, today, brown and whipped about into brittleness by the seemingly capricious wind.
As warm as this day was--The temperature reached 69 degrees F, according to the weather report--it was unmistakably a prelude to winter. Even when the sun appeared, it did not light up the sky as it did even a few days ago. Rather, it--and all of the light of this day--seemed to be little more than a truce with darkness. And the cold.
Gertrude Stein once said of T.S. Eliot, "He looks like the Fifteenth of November." Whatever Fifteenth she was talking about must have looked like this one, for as warm as today was, it was an uncanny spiritual reflection of the poet who was forgiven (at least by me!) many sins for having written "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
I grow old...I grow old..
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
The fifteenth of November is definitely a "precipice" date. You cannot pretend that you have just entered the fall; summer is a rather distant memory. And what are memories but the fictions our minds write for us?
And that is exactly the reason why people--I include myself, through most of my life--hold on to memories for dear life, sometimes at the cost of our own lives. I often feel that is the reason why people vote for reactionary politicians--or, worse, re-elect them, as they did with George W. Bush. (I can say "they" because I didn't vote for either of his terms.) Everyone wants to return to the Garden, whether of Eden of the Finzi-Continis, whether or not it actually existed.
On September 11th, everyone wished it was the 10th, or even a date before that. I've had Fourths of July (my birthday) when I wished it was the third, and any number of other dates I wished hadn't come to pass mainly because of the uncertainty that lay before them.
And on the fifteenth of November in 2003, Mom and Dad probably were wishing that it was the fourteenth. I'm sure they felt that way for many, many days afterward. Sometimes I did, too. Sometimes I wished for days even earlier than the fourteenth of that year, or an earlier year than that one.
Five years ago today, I came out to Mom and Dad. I didn't expect it to be easy for either of them: They knew, as well as I did, that we were entering a new and unsettled season in our relationship and in our lives. None of us knew what to expect, really: All I had was the hope that whatever I would have to endure in my transition would lead me to the happiness and spiritual fulfillment that had always eluded me, no matter how many people loved me and how many good things I did.
Even in all that uncertainty, though, I could sense that in some way they--my mother, at any rate--felt a sort of relief. For her--and for my father, too, although he did not express it overtly--my life finally made sense to them. I know it did for me, for the first time. All those relationships that didn't work--because they couldn't. The alcohol and drug abuse. The self-loathing. The things I started and never followed through. Of course. My mother said as much: "You had to spend so much energy fighting yourself."
For the first few months that followed, Mom, as compassionate as she was, seemed to feel anger that she couldn't quite place: Sometimes she was upset with me; other times she was upset with herself. Once she realized that it wasn't her "fault" that I am who I am, she chided herself for not knowing more and learning more quickly than she did. "I'm really trying to understand. Really I am."
"I know you are. And I'm not going to ask anything else of you. After all, it took me 40 years to figure it out."
I don't know how many times we had that exchange. But I also can't remember the last time we had it. The funny thing is that she had no idea of just how well she understood what I'd gone through, was going through and what I always wanted. I guess it's like that with the people who help you the most: They don't always realize what they've done for you.
The thing she didn't realize then, and perhaps she realizes now, is that she really was doing the best she could do, of herself and for me. And that I wasn't going to give up on her, any more than she would give up on me.
One thing never changed: We talked to each other every weekend, sometimes for an hour or more, by phone.
During those months that followed my "coming out," Dad was more enigmatic: He would send little gifts, such as pendants. to me but we'd barely talk at all. According to Mom, he also didn't want me to come down for a visit because there were friends and neighbors of theirs who knew me as Nick, and who knew how they'd react to me now?
But about a year ago, I noticed that I was talking more with him, though not nearly as much as with Mom. Still, it was an improvement from the previous three years. In fact, I'd say that we were--and are--talking to each other more than we did when we were living in the same house. He even congratulated me when I said I was seeing Dominick.
And he even took me shopping when I was visiting them in August. I never would have predicted anything like that. Yet in some way, it seems entirely "in character" for him.
Does he still sometimes wish I could be Nick, his namesake? Does Mom wish I could have been one of those eldest sons who makes his mother proud and who would have given her a grandchild who would probably be in, or getting ready to go to, college about now? Do they wish I could have pursued the careers, the lifestyles or anything else they had envisioned for me? I'm sure they always will. But they know they can no more wish that son into existence than I could be him. Actually, now that I think of it, I think they always knew that. Of course it would have been a more certain, and easier, road for them--and probably for me, too--had I been able to be that person they thought, or hoped, they had brought into this world.
They stayed with me on the Fifteenth of November, and the days that have followed. I could not have asked for any more. Out of the uncertainty has come joy that I never knew existed. And, I hope, that for them, a flower of that changing of the season is the understanding that while I may have become something they never could have envisioned, that I also love them in ways none of us could have understood on the fourteenth. Because I was honest with them, for the first time in my life, on the fifteenth.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
