Crafting From Empathy and Inevitability: James Wright

Today is James Wright's birthday.

It's somehow appropriate, almost cosmically so, that he was born as winter was descending on the steel mill town (Martins Ferry, Ohio) in which he grew up. Quite possibly no poet ever used the word "darkness" as much as he did in his early poems.

But the interesting thing about his poetry--at least from the poems in This Branch Will Not Break onwards--is that for all of the self-pity he expressed in some of them, his poems are almost never despairing. Sometimes they're angry; other times, they're sad. But at least every emotion he expresses in his poem is an emotion he came by honestly.

The reason for that is that he never, ever "dumbs down" his poems, at least not spiritually. Absent is the facile cynicism that could have come so easily to someone who had his experiences and had a career as an academic. Also absent is the hedonism disguised as spirituality that too often infects the works of the writers of the so-called Beat Generation.

One thing that irked me about guys like Orlovsky and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg (and I say this as someone who studied under Ginsberg) is that they could rhapsodize about the holiness of the hands that crafted the latticework on the fire-escape on an East Village tenement without knowing who those hands belonged to, much less empathising with that person. That trait bothered me long before I could articulate it: While I admired some of the strange lyricism and the stances against authority expressed in some of their poems, something about many of them simply didn't seem authentic to me. Even as a teenager, I felt that way.

Wright--whose work I would discover when I was in my twenties--was the exact opposite. He couldn't keep a long poetic line running on anger and alienation (as Ginsberg did in Howl ) or with an elegaic rhythm (see Ginsberg's Kaddish). But his free-verse poems flowed, not seamlessly, but from a sense of inevitability (which is not always as smooth as one might expect) from something seen (rather than a "vision") to something else seen. Plus, Wright seemed to understand that an image is not just a picture rendered into words; it is something that has its power because it causes the reader (or viewer) to engage his or her imagination. That is why, even at his self-pitying worst, he is utterly transcendent. I almost hate to use that word; the quality I'm describing is almost beyond that.

Many of us in writing workshops tried to emulate his poems. Do I need to say that we failed? Anybody can assemble lines of words into something with a ragged edge and call it "free verse." But to have the kind of empathy Wright had for his subjects, and the respect he had for the music of the words he used, is something that nobody can imitate.

Anyway, I'll stop talking about him and leave you with a few of his poems.

A Blessing

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moons young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

And now, here's one for all of you football fans:

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

Passing Jewish

Late this afternoon, I took a walk that extended to well after dark. That's not hard to do at this time of year, just a few days before the Winter Solistice.

My walk, which began with no particular plan or direction, took me to the northern end of my neighborhood, where a Con Ed power station is the only thing between the rowhouse-lined side streets and the almost metallic waters of Long Island Sound, near the point where it meets the East River.

I stayed on the side of the street with the rowhouses, many of which were garlanded with strings of lights. Reindeer and sleighs made from chicken wire, around which spiralled more strings of those lights, stood guard at some of those houses. Most of the people who live there are second- or third-generation Greek-Americans or Southeastern European immigrants who, by whatever means, scraped together the down payments. Some of them have more than one generation of family living in them.

The one exception was a house on the bay side of the avenue, a few blocks past the power station and a row of other industrial buildings. It's just around the corner from the old Steinway piano works and looks as if it has been holding out the same way for the past fifty years or so.

In each of the second-floor windows was a Magden David made from blue, white and silver lights. And, in one of the ground-floor windows stood a lit figurine of what appeared to be a cantor.

For a nanosecond, I thought of knocking on the door. They were most likely the only Jewish family in that neighborhood, and they were displaying their identity on...well, if not their sleeves, at least in their portals to the rest of the world.

It made me think of what it is like to "come out." Or, more precisely, I found myself reflecting on what it means to have one's identity known, how that comes about and what the consequences might be.

Now, being a Jew in Queens, or anywhere in New York, hasn't been so unusual in about, oh, 15o years or so. To be sure, there are anti-Semites here, and the part of Queens in which I was walking has never exactly been known as a bastion of Judaism. Still, I don't think very many people who know them give it much of a thought.

Then I realized why: Among all of those highly-, sometimes gaudily-decorated houses, I saw very few people. They were walking their dogs and they probably lived those houses. But as soon as their dogs do whatever they need to do, they go back into their houses.

Maybe what I saw isn't typical of that part of the neighborhood. Still, I couldn't help but to wonder how much people were getting out and interacting. If they weren't, that might well be the reason why that Jewish family could display their faith so publicly during their holiday: Perhaps nobody was there to see it. Or they just didn't notice.

If that's the case, then I'm struck by how much that parallels what many trans people think of as "passing" and what many of us want in our lives in our "new" gender: for others not to notice. So we get dressed in a nice outfit and put on our makeup--so we won't be noticed.

Of course, it's odd to talk about that in my blog. Then again, most of the people I see--and will most likely never see again--have no idea about me or my history and, if they got a glimpse of me, will not give me a second glance. That is normal; that is what I experience most of the time. And, honestly, I wouldn't want it any other way.

I guess it's a variant on an old fantasy of mine (which I still sometimes indulge in): that lots of people would read my writing, but only a few would recognize me on the street and even fewer would give me a second glance.

Well, I guess the second part of that fantasy has come true. To most people--if they catch sight of me--I'm just another middle-aged woman passing by and passing through. Not that I'm complaining about that.

Now, to get that book published...

Into--Or From--The Cold

The past couple of days have been windy. Yesterday, before I went to work, I heard the clatter of something brittle toppling and breaking. Turned out to be one of my landlady's planters on her porch.

And it has turned markedly colder. The weather had been mild, if rather gray, through much of the fall. Cold as it was today, the sun shone.

Why am I talking about the weather, again? Well, these days are reminding me of when I first began to take hormones. I took my very first dose on Christmas Eve; about a month or so later, I started to feel some of the effects. Among them were my increased sensitivity to cold. It seemed that around the end of January or the beginning of February, the winds grew stiffer and the air grew colder than anything I could recall from previous years. As a matter of fact, around that time, one of the most intense blizzards this city has ever experienced dumped nearly two feet of snow, as I recall. I don't know whether the weather actually turned significantly colder at that time. But it certainly seemed that way.

Other people have assured me that it has indeed been much colder during the past couple of days: They're feeling it, too. Still, I can remember when I would venture out on a day like this in not much more than a long-sleeved cycling jersey and a vest. Sometimes I even wore shorts. When I went out today, I was wearing my English duffle coat with the toggle buttons and a long scarf. It was warm enough, even though I wore a faux twinset that isn't as heavy as it looks underneath my coat. I felt a little bit cold around my thighs and knees: I wore a wide flared skirt that fell to my calves and boots that came up to about two inches above the skirt's hemline. But I didn't wear heavy tights; I wore a regular pair of dark gray pantyhose. What was I thinking?

Then again, I often find that whether I feel cold, hot or something in between is not always a function of how much or what I'm wearing. If I were an astrologer, I'd say that, as a Cancerian, I am affected by the phases of the moon and the tides on the sea. I probably am; I probably would be even if I lived in Nebraska. Barbara Kingsolver wrote about something like that in "High Tide In Tucson." Her daughter had some sort of amphibious animal, as I recall, in a terrarium. Even though they were about a thousand miles from the ocean, that animal--I forget what--was sleeping and sleeping according to the rise and fall of the tides.

Like her daughter's "pet," I have the lunar and littoral cycle within me. That is probably the reason why I have always been drawn to the sea, and why I would live by its rhythms even if I were far away from it.

At least, I think I have the moon's and the ocean's clock programmed into my body's mechanisms, if not my DNA. It's the most plausible explanation I can find for the sensations I have, which sometimes seem out of sync with, or at least independent of, external stimuli.

But today actually was cold. I can tell you that much.

The War President And His Peace Prize

So we have a President who, in accepting a Nobel Peace Prize, talks about a "just war" that just happens to be the one to which he committed thousands of new troops.

I know I'm not the only one who sees the "disconnect." Even the producers of Faux, I mean Fox, News could see it, even if only because it gave them another way to pick at Obama. "War President Accepts Peace Prize." That's what emblazoned the screens of those who watched their so-called news program. I saw it in a diner in which I'd stopped on my way to work.

He said something to the effect that sometimes you have to make war in order to get peace. Well, there may be silver lining to his making a statement like that: At least I will never, ever have to explain 1984 again. My students can now see it happening before their eyes.

Let's see: You have to make war to make peace. You have to get fat to get skinny. You have to kill in order to give birth. You have to become poor to get rich. You have to ignore in order to learn. Hmm...This is an interesting line of logic, to say the least. Could repression be expression? Maybe Dr. Joyce Brothers (When was the last time you thought about her?) was right, in a way, after all! Maybe Obama should hire her as an advisor.

One more step of that kind of logic, and we come to this conclusion: You have to support repressive thugs in order to bring about democracy. You have to colonize in order to liberate. And, finally, you have to fail at invading a country like Afghanistan--as the Ottomans, British and Russians did--and have your empire fall as a result, in order to secure your place as one of the great powers in the history of nations.

All right. Obama may be ignorant of history. In that regard, he's not alone among Presidents. Nor does the fact that his speech was full of Newspeak make him terribly different from other rulers we've had. But there is one thing that sets him apart from even George W, who was easily the worst President of my lifetime: At least Bush the Younger had an exit strategy, however flawed, for the American invasion of Iraq. On the other hand, Obama is saying that we'll be out of Afghanistan within 18 months, but he's sending in more troops. Say what?

One other area in which he has out-Bushed Bush is in his declaration that people can be held indefinitely and without charge or trial, not only on the suspicion that they've committed crimes (Bush's decision), but just in case they may commit a crime.

The truth of the matter is that we can almost never predict whether or not someone will commit a crime. The most seemingly law-abiding citizen might find him or her self in dire circumstances; at that point, he or she may or may not "cross the line." And, there are plenty of people who would like to see the US destroyed but will not take any action to make it happen.

So, Obama is not only a "war president;" he is more of a foe of civil liberties than Bush the Younger, or any other President of my lifetime, could have dreamed of being.

And for that, he gets a Nobel Peace Prize? No wonder some people don't believe in God!

Si Questo Un'Uomo...If This Is A Man, I Understand

A comic--I forget which one--said that he made people laugh to make himself laugh, and that both he and they needed it because he and they were on the verge of tears. Or something like that.

An experience I had today illustrates what he meant. A student--probably about forty or so years old--asked to see me after class.

I didn't see her last week. That was certainly out of character for her. I wasn't going to ask her whereabouts during the past week; I was happy that she'd come to class. She submitted her paper and started our conversation with a rather sad joke. (Is that an oxymoron?) "My husband thinks he's Tiger Woods," she said, with a forced, desperate smile.

A few people have made jokes about him, but not so many as when other male celebrities got caught with their pants down, if you will. People seemed more shocked to learn of his extramarital affair than they were to learn about the sexual misbehavior of other famous male athletes. (I can't recall hearing of a female athlete in a sex scandal!) I think that people felt a loss of innocence--if not for themselves, then for their children, to whom they held up Tiger as a role model)--over learning that he allegedly had multiple affairs.

Even with those feelings of disappointment, some people still made jokes, or snide comments, about him. You can do that when someone you don't know personally gets into that sort of trouble. It allows some people to feel superior, at least for a moment, to someone who has the sort of life they envy because they don't understand it.

On the other hand, my student seemed to be feeling no envy at all for Tiger Woods, his wife, his mistress(es) or anyone else. She was in too much pain for that. All she wanted was to turn back the calendar a few weeks. It's what I like to call "the wish for September 10th."

She found out her husband has been having multiple affairs for some time now. She learned of this after losing her job. So she got two things that are on everyone's holiday wish list, right?

Somehow, I think that it's not learning about her husband's dalliances that hurt her most. Rather, it was the realization of what she did and sacrificed for him. She came to this country and worked so that she could sponsor him to come here. Then she bore his kids, continued to work and, after coming home from work, cooked, cleaned, helped her kids with homework and other things that needed doing, went to meetings with her kids' teachers and such. She also told me that even though her husband has a good job, she pays the rent on their place. And she's expected to use the remains of her check to provide the kids with whatever they need.

The thing that upset me the most was learning how members of her family were holding his affair against her. She must have done something to displease him, or simply to lose his interest, they tell her. She wasn't paying enough attention to him, they say.

She has her own take on the situation: "People change when they come to this country. My friends warned me about that." Plus, "he's a man."

Yes, he is a man. I have never met him, but I know exactly what she means and am in complete agreement with her. And I can also empathise with her in her rage and hurt, as someone who has been cheated on.

However, I cannot hate the man, and not only because I don't know him. At one time, I would have hated him, for essentially the same reasons I could hate almost any man. First, and most important, they were what I was forced to be: male and masculine. And they were, in some way or another, complicit in enforcing that code by which I was compelled to live. Needless to say, having been molested as a child--by men--had something to do with my hatred as well.

Another reason why I could hate just about any man was that it was a way of borrowing other people's--specifically, women's--anger. That, of course, gave rationale and fuel to the anger I already carried. The only means by which I knew how to live was by that rage I felt simply for having to be in this world. And, somehow, I felt that feeding off women's anger was a way of channeling their energy through me. I imagined that in some way it brought me closer to other women.

Now, of course, that seems patently absurd, at least to me. Even more important for me, though, has been realizing that I can empathise with the man, too. While I do not condone their cheating or other sexual misconduct, I can understand why men like her husband do those things, and why they still believe they love their wives and girlfriends even while they're in the process of betraying them.

Later in the day, I told another professor about my conversation with that student, and how I felt. "Well, that's exactly the reason why that student came to you,' " the prof said. "She wasn't looking for a man-basher. She just wants what she had, or thought she had."

Of course, I can't give my student what she had before. But, at least--according to that other prof, anyway--I gave her my understanding of her, and her situation. Maybe she understands her husband a little better, too.

The odd thing is that I wasn't trying to accomplish anything in particular. She needed to talk to someone; I was there and I understand both sides and can empathise with her.

During any sort of transition or other change, things happen that you weren't expecting; you change in ways you never could have imagined. I hope my student understands this, too.

Fine But Tired

The papers are piling up. The days are getting shorter. And the weather forecast is for combinations of rain, sleet and snow until ntil tomorrow afternoon. This can only mean the end of the semester and the beginning of winter are coming. So is Christmas. And I haven't done a thing about it. Oh, no!: A male pattern of mine won't change, at least not this year: Most likely, I'll shop and mail my cards at the last minute. At least I'm not doing that out of procrastination: I have so little time and my body is still catching up to my surgery. Everything feels fine, but I'm tired.

Five Months Passed; What They Don't Know About My Past

Five months already! That's how long it's been since my surgery.

I haven't had a chance to meet my new neighbors yet. Some of them have probably seen me walking around the nearby segment of Broadway, where I do much of my shopping. Many of the store and restaurant owners, and the workers at the nail salon--not to mention the guys at The King of Falafel and Schwarma.

Something occured to me about the people I haven't yet met: They don't know about my past. Neither does my landlady. As far as she knows, I've never been anything but a woman. I got a kick out of hearing her tell her son that she rented the apartment to "una dama sympatica--ella es una profesora." They're from Spain--near Barcelona, to be exact--and have, so far, been friendly and helpful.

And they don't know about my past. And I have no compulsion to tell them. I also have no reason to tell anyone else I might meet, unless that person wanted me to bear his or her children. I suppose I could simply say that I can't have children. For one thing, I'm old enough that such an explanation would be plausible. For another, it is simply the truth.

Millie and John have known me for seven years; they knew me as a man only for the first year. They never refer to me as anything but a woman--not among themselves or to anyone else to whom they might mention me. That is what they tell me, and I have every reason to believe them. In fact, it was Millie who told me, about a year ago, that I have no reason to tell anyone about my former identity. "You are a woman," she asserted.

The relationship I have with them probably is most like the ones I could form now. Bruce knew me as a male for more than twenty years before I made the "switch;" between us, it's been a non-issue except when he asks about how various aspects of my transition and current life have gone, or are going.

And then there are people who know me as a trans person because they met me during my transition or I met them among other trans people--in everything from the support groups to the advocacy events in which I've participated.

But now I have an opportunity to meet people who don't know about that aspect of my life. And I know I could form new relationships on that basis--after all, there have been people who were surprised to find out that I was a trans woman. On one hand, I want that. But on another, I want to maintain my ties to other trans people and our supporters and allies--and, of course, the people I met in Trinidad.

So I could end up living in two worlds after all. But at least it wouldn't be like the time I spent straddling the worlds of gender identity, as I did when I was going to work as a guy named Nick and socializing (and being something of an activist) as a gal named Justine. Now, at least, if I were to be known only as a middle-aged woman to some people and as a woman with an unconventional (for a woman, anyway) past, shall we say, to some other people, I don't have the same fear of being found out by one of those groups as I did when I did my boy/girl split. And, well, if someone who didn't know about my past were to find out about it, I won't deny or whitewash it. I don't want to form new relationships based on something I'm not, at least not anymore, but I'm not going to hide, or hide from, it.

A Bridge And A Gate At The End Of The Day

After yesterday's rain and driving wind, the cold, crisp, clear air felt good. Late this afternoon, I walked to Astoria Park, where the sunset and twilight feel as if they're made of stone, steel and the reflections in the wakes of boats plying the deceptively calm East River. That passage, between Queens, Randall's Island and Manhattan, is called Hell Gate. A number of ships ran aground there; a few actually broke up and sank.

A long, arched railroad bridge spans the river from Manhattan, through Roosevelt Island and onto the Queens side. Amtrak trains rumble over it; with its steel girders and stone embankments at each end, it's not hard to picture the steam engines that used to harrumph across it, then screech around the bend a bit beyond the park and whine as they faded into the distance. Somehow the modern Amtrak trains seem even more archaic and anachronistic than those steam engines would; they somehow accentuate the passage of time and another day passed.

As I started to walk home from there, I called my parents. They had to cancel the trip up this way they'd planned for Thanksgiving week; now they've cancelled the trip they'd planned for Christmas, which they were going to spend with my brother and his family. Neither of them, especially my mother, has been feeling well. What used to take days to heal now takes weeks or even months. On top of those ailments are new ones that come, at least in part, from aging.

Tonight, for the first time (that I can recall, anyway), I thought of my parents as old. Even when I was a kid, I didn't think of them that way. That may have to do with my being the eldest child and the fact that my parents were young (though not particularly so by the standards of their generation) when I was born. So, while neither of my parents ever tried to walk, talk or do anything else the way any of my peers or I did them, I never felt the sort of generational gap between me and them that a lot of other kids felt between them and their parents. That's not to say we didn't have (or still don't have!) disagreements. But I never felt that either of them--especially my mother--was living in a world entirely different from my own.

One irony is that now I feel this distance in age--and, more important, in what we can expect from the rest of our lives--as we have, in many ways, grown closer. Another irony is that I am in what's normally called middle age, which is the stage of life my parents were living in my early adulthood. Now that I am living what I saw them live, I understand what they're thinking and saying more than I previously could. I might even say that I empathise with them in ways I couldn't when I was younger. And now they understand me better.

I offered to go and spend Christmas with them, as I did last year. Mom reminded me that I might not find a ticket, and that if I found one, it would be extremely expensive. Besides, she said, she would rather rest. I can't say I blame her.

I just hope I get to see her and Dad soon. It's not that I have anything urgent to talk about with them. Besides, after what I've been through and what I've done, what can be so urgent--besides spending time with them? Even if they were to live another thirty years, that would matter more than anything else that I can think of.

Hallucinatory Fatigue

Now I'm at the point of unpacking things just to unpack them, and moving my bed and dresser just so I can use them. Things look fairly hideous now, but at least I can actually see some of the floor.

It was just as well that I did the work I did: The temperature fell with the rain throughout the day. Now, the temperature is right around the freezing point; the possibility of snow described by the weather forecasters just may come true.

When you're really tired, almost anything can seem like an hallucination. And almost anything looks like one when viewed through the Dali-esque mirrors formed by raindrops. Can you imagine what the moon would look like in such a setting?

The bruise that spread like a slow-motion oil slick across my left side, all the way to my navel, is fading now. However, I still have what looks like a Continental Shelf where it looked like I was pregnant with a hammerhead shark. I never had the world's most appealing body, even when I was in the best physical condition of my life, and I don't want to look like I'm in the advanced stages of cirrhosis of the liver. Wouldn't that be ironic? One of my old neighbors was a few years older than I am and had been getting drunk almost every day since she was an adolescent. She wasn't just thin; she could have hidden behind a matchstick. All right, I wouldn't want to be her. Still, why do I have to look like the long-term alcoholic?

Maybe I should become Russian. People, of all ages, genders and orientations, tell me that I have beautiful eyes. Those Russian writers could spend page after page talking about a woman's eyes. That's what they did on the good day. On a bad day, they can spend hundreds of pages sulking.

All right. I know I shouldn't lump writers, or any people, of any country or culture together. But tell me: Have you ever read a Russian novel that wasn't written by Bulgakov (sp?) that you would actually give to someone who is clinically depressed?

This isn't to say that I don't like War and Peace, Notes from The Underground, The Brothers Karmazov or The Cherry Orchard. I know, the last one is a play. But it's great for many of the same reasons as the other works I've mentioned.

By the way: Lots of people think Nabokov is a Russian writer. Yes, he was born there, but I disagree. On the other hand, I think Moby Dick and L'etranger are really Russian novels (at least in spirit), even though they were written by Melville and Camus, respectively.

Now I think of how every generation has its "World's Shortest Books" jokes. One was "How to Survive a Nuclear War." How about this for the World's Shortest Doctoral Dissertation: "Wit and Humor in 19th-Century Russian Novels."

I'll pass on that one. But if anyone out there wants to take it on, be my guest. I can just imagine some literary scholar or critic writing such a book as a kind of esoteric joke.

For that matter: What do you think of "The Esoteric Joke" as a name for a band?

See, I told you I'm tired!

Resting After The Last Seven Years, And For The Next Seven

Today was a slow day for me. I slept late and got not much done besides my laundry. The state of my unpacking is exactly where it was at the beginning of this week. I know that, realistically, I won't have this apartment in anything like a "finished" state until New Year's Day or thereabouts. I will probably do a lot of work during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, as I will not be on my job.

In the meantime, I've ordered a bike rack that, I think, will better fit this space than what I had been using in my previous apartment. It's not smaller, but it will hang the bikes by their rear wheels, which I actually prefer to mounting them horizontally on the wall. The latter way can make for a nice "bicycle art" display, but I find it more difficult to get the bikes on and off. Also, the bike is less stable that way than it is when it's hung vertically. Finally, my new rack includes shelves on which I can leave my helmets, gloves and other accessories and items I use when I ride.

My two Mercians will hang on that rack. The Raleigh three-speed, which is locked to a post outside, will probably stand in the hallway between my kitchen and bedroom, as it weighs about twice as much as either of my Mercians.

Maybe it's just as well that I probably won't have that rack for another two weeks or so. I'm doing what I can to shape this place up, but as Gunnar Berg reminded me, I've just had my surgery and, as someone (Yogi Berra?) once said, I'm not as young as I used to be. Maybe I needed this day to recoup, to recharge--and to take things in.

Although my physical appearance (at least what 99.999 percent of all people see) is the same as it was before my surgery, people have told me that I look "different"--for the better. Yesterday I talked with a prof from another department with whom I've been friendly but have hardly seen at all this semester. "You're more beautiful than ever!," she exclaimed.

More beautiful than ever! As if I ever were beautiful! All right, I'll take it. And I'll let you in on a little secret I've stumbled over: The only thing better than a man who can make a woman blush is another woman who can make her blush!

Would she or anyone else say the same thing if he or she were to see me now--in my sweats, with my hair a mess, as I slouch in front of my computer? Charlie is curled up next to me and Max has just crawled into my lap. They're both purring loudly. If I'm a mess, at least I'm as happy as they are.

Seven years ago, neither of them was with me. I'd had another cat named Charlie who, like my eponymous feline companion of today, is gray and white, and a pretty calico named Candice. Sometimes I miss them: After all, each of them was in my life for longer than any except for a couple of friends I've had, and the only people who were in my life for longer than those friends were or are related to me. And I've never had any material object, lived in any place, or stayed in any job or school for as long as I had either Candice or my first cat named Charlie.

Why am I thinking about them, or the past, now? Well, I spent seven years on Ninth Street: four and a half in the house from which I just moved, and two and a half in an apartment in a building on a corner of that block. Although seven years is like the blink of an eye in the scheme of the universe, in my life, those seven years were almost a geologic age: one during which the ground shifted, settled into something resembling its current form, and shifted in more subtle, subterranean ways.

What is it about seven years? In so many cultures and traditions, lives are lived and events happen in cycles of seven years. As an example, in Genesis, Joseph prophesies that lean years will follow the seven prosperous years that were about to come to an end in Egypt. (An economist once admitted that economic forecasting hasn't gotten any better than that.) I hope that the past seven years weren't the "feast," at least for me: I'd hate to think a "famine" is about to follow (although that may well be the case for the economy). If anything, if I had to characterize the past seven years, I'd say they were intense. Perhaps they were the most intense period of my life. But that is definitely not to say they were the worst, or best--or the most difficult, although I would say that 2002, when those seven years began, was one of the most difficult years, if not the most difficult year, of my life so far. It's not the sort of time I can say I mastered or in which I achieved a victory: Somehow, I survived it. Actually, that's pretty much all I can say for my life up to that point.

But the rest I've gotten today isn't, I hope, merely a respite from what I've experienced. Rather, I would like to think that it's helping me to store up what I'll need for the coming days. Even if those days will bring joy and prosperity, I will need to be ready for them.

Mike Penner and Christine Daniels

Last night, I checked out Eva-Genevieve's blog and was shocked to find her post that linked an article about Mike Penner's apparent suicide.

You may recall that about two and a half years ago, Penner, a well-respected sportswriter for the L.A. Times, "came out" as a trans woman. She took a leave of absence and, after returning, wrote a number of columns as Christine Daniels. But then, last October, he quietly returned to living as Mike Penner.

I know that some people will take Penner as proof that trans people are indeed neurotic, if not perverted. Others will see it as proof that all trans people will suffer "transition remorse," if you will.

In the rest of this post, I will refer to Mike Penner by his given name and the gender assigned to him at birth only because he was publicly identifying himself by them at the end of his life. However, I hope that you will not read it as my own judgment about his identity. Not having known him, I cannot say whether Mike was indeed transgendered, much less whether the transition was the "right" or "best" idea for him.

However, I more or less agree with Eva-Genevieve when she says that his death is a cautionary tale about one peril of transition: taking it too lightly. It's not something one can "try on for size." At least, most people in most situations can't do, or at least would have a very difficult time of doing, that.

The transition itself is jarring enough for the one making it and his or her family, friends and colleagues. It almost invariably has some unanticipated cost or another, no matter how well one prepares for it. The one in transition might not lose his or her job outright, but colleagues who were previously thought to be allies may undermine his or her work and reputation. Family members and friends whose love and companionship seemed unconditional may decide to end their relationships with the person in transition. And, of course, there are the financial costs.

I am not complaining about any of those things. Yes, I had a few surprises--but some were pleasant. And what I've lost seems in retrospect to be,if not inevitable, at least not so surprising. Most important of all, I now have the strength to continue after those losses.

On the other hand, one might say that I had less at stake than Mike Penner did when I started my transition seven years ago. The number of people who knew me was much smaller than his circle of acquaintances, and although I have been a journalist, the combined readership of every publication for which I've written is probably much smaller than the LA Times. Plus, I had practically no cyber "footprint" as a male. Also, at the time I started, I had been away from academia for a few years, so I was out of contact with my former students and colleagues.

Furthermore, Tammy and I had just split up and I'd moved. Penner, in contrast, was married and had children.

So Mike Penner, at the time he became Christine Daniels, was entangled in a wider and tighter web than any I had ever spun. That meant not only was his transition more complicated than mine, "going back" was even more treacherous than it would have been for someone like me.

I think now that "undoing" his transition must have been, in some ways, even more difficult than the transition itself. He had known almost nothing but success in his life; to return to living as a male was surely seen by some--and possibly himself--as a failure. I would suspect that he might have gotten even more opprobrium than he did when he was making the transition from Mike to Christine.

What's even worse is that he could not have returned to the life he had before his transition. By the time he returned, he was divorced. Most likely, he had lost other relationships that helped to sustain him during his pre-transition days. I do not know whether or not he developed new friendships and other relationships during his time as Christine, but I would guess that if he had, at least one of them wanted to be friends with Christine, not with Mike. And, perhaps worst of all, he was probably seen as something less than a man (any woman--cis, trans, manque or otherwise--is seen that way, at least by some men) in the overwhelmingly male profession he practiced. And, finally, not only are most of his sportswriting colleagues male; so are most of the subjects of his and their work.

What his story exposes is how rigidly gender roles are defined and how little room there is for one to find out who and what one actually is, much less live by it. Most people never have gender identity conflicts; few understand what it's like to have one. And what even fewer people understand is that the only way to learn how to live with it--whether that means some form of sublimation, going for the surgery or something in between--is to live "as" one sees one's self, whatever that may be.

As it happens, in some ways I do fit into most people's notions about a woman of my age, more or less--and, almost as important, a straight woman of that age. That is one of the reasons why I haven't lived in what I call the "gender underground": I can interact with cis people as if I were more or less one of them. I am also very fortunate in that, even with the difficulties I've encountered, every step I've taken on the road from my previous life and in my current one has felt right. Plus, most important of all, even though I have lost relationships and other aspects of my previous life, I have gained new ones, some of which are better than any I could have imagined in my previous life. Not to mention that I also now have access to emotional and spiritual resources I never knew existed, much less that were within me.

Now, I don't know whether Mike Penner would have had such experiences had he continued to live as Christine Daniels. But I suspect that he never had the opportunity to learn what it really would have meant to be Christine Daniels--or Mike Penner. If that is the case, that may be--at least for him--the worst thing about his life and death.

What Do They Know?

Now it's coming on the end of the semester. The stress is building, as it normally does at this time of year.

I'm still unpacking and figuring out ways to arrange and store things. I won't quite feel settled in until I hang my pictures and the Turkish rug that used to adorn the wall in the bedroom of my old place. It's too beautiful to lay on a floor! Ironically enough, that's the reason I nearly sold it: The man who almost bought it from me has a collection of near- and far- Eastern objects that would complement it much better than anything I have. Even though I'm not a collector and I'm not knowledgeable about Oriental carpets (or objets d'art), I think I'd regret selling it.

Even though I'm not quite settled in, something feels safe and comfortable about this place. Maybe it's because this night is raw and rainy, and I feel ensconced here.

Most of the day was drizzly, as was the early evening. The street lights flickered their reflections in the glaze of rainwater that rippled with the grooves and cracks in the sidewalk as I disembarked the bus and walked down the street where I live. The brick rowhouses--I live in one of them--seem elegant, at least in a petit-bourgeois sort of way, in the soft rain that would sizzle if it were warmer.

My great-aunt's and uncle's house--very much like the ones on this street--simmered in a similar sort of light and drizzle in Jackson Heights so many years ago. Perhaps that is the reason why I have always associated blocks and houses like these with older people. Perhaps the fact that I am living here means that I am now an older person, too.

Then again, when I leave here to go to work, I see lots of young people, many of them Asian. Some are wearing suits; others are in dress-casual garb; still others are in the sort of fashionable outfits only the young can wear. Those trendy-looking people probably work in the media or fashion, or some industry related to them.

No one on this block, save for my landlady, knows me yet. Ironically, just around the corner are people who've known me since the day I moved onto the block from which I just moved. They are store owners, bakers, pizza makers and nail technicians, as well as people who frequent their businesses. Those people may have some memory of me as Nick, but they all relate to me as Justine. Millie and John knew me only briefly as Nick; now they tell me that they don't see me as anyone but a woman named Justine. And, I would think, if I were to get to know people on this block, or the ones around it, that is how they will know me, too.

Today I was one of the ones who wore a suit to work. Although I'm told that I dress well, I don't normally wear suits, particularly a black one. Whenever I wear it, people tell me I look good: I guess the cut is right. The jacket doesn't make me look even broader and bulkier than I am, and the skirt falls right about to my knee. And I wore a button-down off-white blouse with black stripes underneath the jacket, black stockings and a pair of slingbacks woven from strands of black, white and silver leather.

So what was the occasion? That's what a couple of people asked me. Actually, it was something that turned out to be, thankfully, a non-occasion. I had to go to the administrative offices because the legal affairs officer wanted to discuss something with me. She mentioned it about two weeks ago, but she didn't seem in a great rush to see me. I guess I should have taken that as a sign.

It turns out that someone made an anonymous complaint about me. The legal compliance officer said that because of the regulations, she had to discuss it with me. However, she didn't believe what was said in the complaint. I assured her that nothing in it was true. I figured that it might've come from someone who was unhappy with his or her grade, or who had some other grudge against me. She, on the other hand, thought it came from what she called a "culturephobe": that is to say, someone who comes from a cultural or religious tradition that "doesn't approve" of my "lifestyle." She may be right about that. One thing on which we both agreed was that, given the sort of complaint made, and the language in it, the complainer was probably a young (or youngish) male.

Of course, the fact that the complaint was anonymous means that it could have come from just about anywhere--perhaps even from someone who's not connected in any way with the college.

Even though I haven't done anything unprofessional, and haven't knowingly transgressed anyone's values, I still was worried when I went to meet her. I guess if you were ever sent to the principal's office--especially if said principal was a Carmelite nun--you still get the heebie-jeebies when you're called to the office of some authority figure. So, I was very surprised at how she actually tried to get me to lighten up. She "knew" I wouldn't have done the things that complainer accused me of doing, and, since it was isolated, it wasn't "indicative" of me. "After all," she said, "There are a lot of people here who respect you as an educator--and a person."

So you can just imagine how deeply I exhaled this afternoon. But now I'm also thinking about what it would be like to go to a new workplace where nobody knows me. When I came to the college where I work now, there were people who knew me before I went there. A couple were colleagues at LaGuardia Community College; a bunch were students there who, after completing their associate's degrees, transferred to my current college. Word got around, and I did nothing to deny or downplay my past.

There are some who feel--positively and negatively-- as they do about me precisely because of my past--or what they've heard about it, anyway.

The people on this block have heard nothing, except for tonight's wind and rain.

Between Seasons: Middle Age

Back to campus today, after the move. Now I'm feeling really tired. It's not just from the move, though.

Today was one of those gray, rainy days on which the fallen brown leaves seem even more sere than they did on the windy days that preceded it. And the now-earthbound foliage lacks the color it had in the days when it was about to fall from the now-bare branches. At the same time, the sky doesn't have the stark clarity of the clear winter sky after snow has fallen.

Someone once told me that what I've just described is a very good metaphor for middle age. Some would say I am of that age, but I don't feel I'm much like the scene I've just described. Still, it feeds, feeds off of, and feeds again any fatigue one may be feeling.

Today I talked with one colleague who can't wait for the semester to be over. I'm sure she's not the only one who feels that way now. At least by the end of the semester, there will be an interlude of cheer from the lights and colors, induced though they may be, of the holiday season.

Just Around the Corner

I am so exhausted. So what am I doing, writing on this blog?, you ask. Well, I'd rather whine to whoever may be reading this than to myself. Call it whatever you will.

I've spent all day unpacking and I still have so much left to do. Why is it that I never recall just how much work it is to move? One would expect that I'd be ready after all the moves I've done. I have an excuse this time: the short notice.

Now I'm thinking of something John, Millie's husband, said as we were returning the van. "If I could sell my house for about a million and a half, I'd just leave everything behind and start over." I can say that if I were made such an offer, I'd probably be tempted, too.

The bruise on my left side has grown. I guess that's to be expected, given all the bending and lifting I've had to do. Dang, it's ugly!

Millie called tonight, as she did last night. She reminded me that since she still has visitation rights to Max and Charlie, she'll be over this way sooner or later. And I'll be at her place again, probably for Christmas.

It's been weird, spending three days with no background music. I still haven't unpacked the speakers. They're in one of the hardest-to-reach boxes. I'll get to them sooner or later.

Now I'm living right around the corner from many of the stores in which I shop and restaurants and cafes in which I eat. I can't help but to think of my first visits to those places, some seven years ago. That's when I first moved onto the block from which I just moved. I'd just met Millie; I hadn't met any of her family members. I didn't know anyone else in the neighborhood. In some way, I felt even more like a stranger among strangers than I did when I first went to Europe.

When I first went to Europe, I'd just graduated college. But I toured on my bike, so I felt I was, in some way, a peer of many of the people I would meet, however briefly. Plus, I felt no special attachment to the college from which I graduated--or, really, to almost anyone. About the only people with whom I made any real effort to stay in contact were my mother, my maternal grandmother and Elizabeth. If I hadn't had them in my life back then, I probably would have stayed away even longer than I did.

When I first moved to the block I just left, Tammy and I had just broken up. We'd been living together for four years, and during the last year, I became a recluse. I was even distant from Tammy, even though we were sharing the same bed. When I moved out, there was really no reason for me to see her again, much less to return to the neighborhood in which we lived.

Now I am on another block where I know no one. But just around the corner, there's so much that's familiar to me.

Do You Want Your Life To Be The Way It Is In Your Blog?

If only life could be like it is in our blogs!

Is that this generation's version of "I wish life could be the way it is in the movies!"?

The other day, someone whose blog I follow told me that lately her "off-blog" life has been chaotic and terrible. She confines her blog to a particular topic that doesn't lend itself to revelations about her personal life as much as this one seems to demand that I reveal about my own life. Still, I understood what she was talking about.

No matter how much I reveal on this blog, I still have a life apart from it. It's not that I'm willfully withholding terrible secrets from my readers; it's just that there's only so much one can talk about in the amount of time and space one has. And, I find that I tend to start with one subject or another and write whatever seems to present itself in the context of my paying attention to that subject.

No matter how much, or in what way, we express ourselves, such is bound to be the case. So--I'm not trying to elicit pity here--there are still things you don't know about, for example, my move. You may not want to know those things, anyway. But that's not the reason I haven't written about them. I simply wasn't thinking about them at the time I sat down to write. And, of course, my time is limited.

But I assure you: My life at the moment is about as chaotic as I've presented it here in this blog. After all, what else would you expect from someone who had to move less than five months after her surgery, the day after being whacked by a car door. Said move was done without her longest-standing male friend (who helped her with her previous move) who is suffering from pneumonia. Another one of the people who helped her that day seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth and she's broken off with another one of her ex-helpers.

Actually, now that I think of it, maybe my life is actually more chaotic and stressful, at least right now, than it is in this blog. At least, at this moment it is.