We move about on a sphere hurling through space, each of us swimming at the bottom of an ocean of air and gaseous water - an atmosphere of pressures and currents and energy. At this moment a Category IV hurricane – Dennis – approaches the Gulf Coast of the United States with ominous force: A hurricane is the most powerful structure on the planet.But there is beauty in the incomprehensible skies. The photograph posted here (click on it for a larger view), taken in the heart of New England, is a rare look at the fragmented eye of a dying hurricane. It's rare solely because it is unusual that any hurricane should pass so far inland in New England, and that it should pass and break apart at sunset (leading to dramatic photos, no doubt). My one regret with the photo is that I saw the scene too late: things went dark rapidly after this image was taken.
So why the picture? I do not know. Perhaps I am hoping for a calm resolution to today's storm; perhaps I am looking for the beauty in the midst of tragedy. Perhaps I am personally looking for a calm in the midst of storm.
Irrespective of the reasons, I offer my prayers to those who have been, and will be, in Dennis' path.
A Poem
For those of you who respond to word rather than image, I offer this poem:
I am not ready
to change the list of sins into something
resembling ease
I am not ready to change the borders between nations
I am not ready to change the currencies of capital
I am not ready to change diapers or schools or addresses
I am not ready to change the world or men or women
or the gospel or the sun, moon, stars, and the streets
in certain towns where small feet begin their walk
toward a living wage.
I am not ready to change the color of grass, or the sky, or
to damn the rainbow as a bumper sticker. I am not ready at all –
for the change clanging about in countless clothes dryers
in a thousand coin-op flourescent linted rooms –
I am not ready to change up or down, left and right
and person and rights and right and wrong and dia-
gonal and the taste of cantaloupe on summer evenings
barefoot in the garden. I am not ready to change
the temperature of the sun, or the face in the moon
I am not ready to change marriage into something re-
sembling two cups atop each other, I like the saucer
beneath the cup and the sky wedded to the sea
and the black and white of chess. I am not going to
change the color of skin because it would make love
easier; or fake an accent because I am not part of
the cognoscenti or some other precious insight or in-
side joke among teammates. I am not ready to change
truth into something digestible.
And I am not about to climb a mountain and shame it
for being above the valley or pull a gun on the
unrighteousness of a given day and to call my dog
a cat or friend a foe or an enemy unredeemable and
I am not ready to change mankind into a woe
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes
[Photo: Dublin Lake, Dublin, NH. Camera: Canon F1. Lens: Canon FD 20mm/2.8. Film: Kodak Ektachrome 100. Exposure: Unrecorded. Click on photo for larger view.]
10 comments:
Hmmm-in your poem you either have a deep-seated fundementalist rage against two cups coming together as one, or possibly the idea of cups being stacked together in a untidy pile, this revealing latent Freudian manifestations of forced-potty training in your mania for obsessively neat teacup cupboards, (Or something along those lines, its been a while since my freshman 101 Intro to Pysch so I am a little rusty on snap character analysis) or quite possibly your secretly just a shill for the United States military-industrial saucer complex. I wasn't sure which explanation held true, but being a true liberal, I'll go for the most sinister interpretation. In any case, a great deal of "cups" seem to be stacking together quite nicely in Massachusetts, Spain, Belguim, and Canada, without plagues of locusts or frogs or ACLU lawyers descending upon the god-fearing, christian world at large, so I doubt any diety at large is overly irked by same-cup coupling, as it were.*snicker*
Being a Transsexual, can I look forward to a piece on the godless evils of cup to saucer conversions as well? Yay!
Danni Lee Leonard
contratimes said...
Dear Danni Lee Leonard,
Thanks for stopping by and visiting Contratimes. I am glad there are readers like you who care enough to comment.
I don't know how to respond. Perhaps I should begin with something you said about yourself. So here it goes:
If you're a transsexual, as you so casually reveal, does that mean that you by definition admit that sexuality can be changed? It sure seems so. Interesting. And I am not talking about sexual identity: I am talking about your sexuality. You've been CHANGED, right? Doesn't that mean that you are a threat to the gay community, who argue that gays and lesbians cannot change who they are; that nature has immutably made them a certain way?
But you did change who you were, didn't you? In fact, you probably believe that nature made a mistake. Maybe not. But other transsexuals I know have indeed said exactly that. But if nature has made a mistake with transsexuals, has nature made mistakes elsewhere? Or is that slope too slippery?
Also, while I welcome visitors, I expect a high-level of participation. I think you'll have to do better than come here and drop off a string of silly Freudian-laced ad hominems at Contratimes. Posit an argument, or find the fallacy. That's what reasonable people do.
In fact, perhaps I can be of assistance: You've already committed two fallacies (at least). The first is the fallacy ad hominem: You've found a problem with me, and not with what I've said. Surely someone of your aptitude must be eager to share how it is I am logically wrong for finding cups and saucers, well, attractive in their utility. Surely you can offer an argument proving that two saucers atop each other function in a gorgeous utilitarianism.
The second fallacy you commit is the fallacy consensus gentium (perhaps the fallacy ad populum). You appeal to majorities, or what other people are doing and thinking in order to justify an act or idea. It seems you believe how a group thinks (like those zany Canadians) about something proves the viability of the object of that group's adulation. Even if everybody thinks or feels or believes X is true or good or beautiful, it does not make it so. In fact, majorities, as you know, are often wrong.
Also, I am an Episcopalian -- you know, a member of that Church with the first openly gay bishop. In fact, Mr. Robinson and I know each other, and have a had quite the conversation. I consider him a gentleman, and he is my brother in the faith. So as for a "fundamentalist rage", I'll leave the fundamentalism to the Unitarians, who are as narrow-minded as they come. (And don't bother: I KNOW Unitarianism.)
But seriously, if you have a cogent argument to drop into the conversation, please do. Regardless, you are always welcome here, even if it is to snicker at me. I mean it.
Or would you like me to be less welcoming? Perhaps you'd like me to venture into the psychosexual dynamics of trans-sexuality. Egads, Danni Lee, surely you must think there are dark influences in your own sexual identity if you are so quick to posit dark forces in mine. If I have had potty-training issues, have you had them as well? Or are you exempt?
May you know the best life has to offer, Danni Lee; and may you know only peace.
Contratimes
*grins* I still wannna take a peak
at those "deleted comments".
Seriously however,*Sits cross-legged on desk and assumes classic lecturing position at this point* my response to your responses would be that transsexualty as a hard n'fast rule, refers to the actual gender being changed of the person, not the sexual identity thereof. Whom the person in question sleeps with is not the medical issue. For the most part, who you preferred to be uh...stacked with before transition, largely stays the same after you become a MS. Hence, the overall broader umbrella
term of "Transgenderism" is used, which refers to gender alone.
Now, I can hear the Mt. Monadnock powered windmills in your mind a -churning
as you ask me in your wilest "Aha-but can gender be changed?" tone of voice. My answer, in short, is "Beats me. I'm so the wrong person to ask a metaphysical question like that. But as I crash through the stained-glass windows of everyday life as a woman, this bod works for me ever so nicely, so why strain at gnats"?
How would I know what another person feels anyway in any gender? Sure, there are many transsexuals who can cite you reams of literature that gender can be changed,(And they all have color-coded webpages for your browsing convience as well-through I can't vouch for the Unitarian part, your on your own there. What is it with this blood-feud between you and Unitarians anyway?) and there are many genetic women who are missing a certain chromosone, or cant give birth, or what have you. But I just go with "Ooooo-nice!" when I pass by a mirror at Macys or Filene. (Althrough I can personally attest that PMS is as bad as what men always hear it to be) Its like the old psycological saying about the mind being a black box. No one knows whats a-humming inside the black box, but when all the boxes hum together in the same key, or gender, then you know your onto something.
Now, as a childhood reciepent of scores of plastic surgeries, (And boy, or should that be girl, did nature screw up with me and my cleft palate, deviated septum, and hare-lip, among other things) to my jaundiced eye, becoming a TS is just another step in having physical corrections made for ones well-being.To me, Mother Nature screws up, I trudge off to the OR to get Mother Natures little boo-boo's corrected. Yeah, I know, that sounds flip, ("What, me being flip?" you ask in amazement at this point in my screed)but I go for bottom-line pragmatism as a rule, as in "This is fun, I like it,it fits with who I am as a person, I'm keeping it and the cute dress it came in too". *shrugs* All I can say is, 100,000 transsexuals can't all be wrong.
Besides, dickering over what transsexuals are or are not, beggers the fact transsexualism by itself, is neither good or bad, it just is. We exist, therefore we are. Like rainbows, or George Bush, or Social Security. Heck, we weren't even in the Old or New Testiment. (A shame really, as we as a people could have done so much to liven up those pages and pages of nothing but scads of boring "begats".) Its what we do from that point on with our new lives, is when the moral standards clause kicks in.
As far as us TS being threats to gays and lesbians, actually we dont hang much with them per se as a group. Gays and lesbians are about hooking up with other cups...er,sorry, I meant gays and lesbians. (No more cups and saucers jokes from this point on-Girls Scouts honor) Transsexuals are about getting their bodies in order then getting on with life. Its not like we have a lot of common mutual interests going on there, through we all do hang more or less together for political purposes when the Big Bad Wolf (read right-wing conservative christians here) comes a-blowing at our respective doors.But I do have lesbian and gay friends as well. Not that I chose them specifically for their sexual identity per se, but rather on their willingness to laugh at my jokes.
Now where is all this excessive verbosity on my part leading you might ask? Actually, I am not entirely sure as I have been actually thinking about roast chicken for supper for the last 15 minutes to be honest, so I kinda lost the thread of the conversation. (Yes, 24/7 diets for women do really have the word "die" in it for a reason)
Howsomever I can also jerk my thumb over my shoulder at the crowds of men and women behind me and ask "Yeah, they sleep with a same -sex person. They also raise kids with that same-sex person, they comfort each other through bad times, help build a community together(yes, even your little community corner of Yankee-dom as well, Mr. Gnade) support each other in sickness and health and bury each other. So where's the difference between you and them? You can't prove that being gay is a basic good or evil in itself, anymore then you can prove that being a TS is good or evil in itself. So then why should a same -sex couple whos otherwise as close to your happy household as two peas in a pod or two saucers in a stack (Yeah, I know-I lied about no more cups and saucers joke. My bad. Hey, I'm the classic American girl next-door tall, thin, blue-eyed blonde, so I get to say anything I want anyways. Nyah nyah.) be on the losing end of the civil-rights debate or the culture civil wars in order to satisfy other peoples precious religious squeamishness?"
*Shakes finger here-then notices I'm overdue for a new nail-poish job and then hastily hide my finger* And also dont get snitty with me and lecture me Mr. Gnade, on my making fun of people, let alone go on about our personal mutual toilet habits (Through it is kinda cool to see how fast corn can fly through the human body) We both graduated the same year at the same dippy High School, and I have very long memories of what being made fun of is like. Being a TS in America is no walk in Paris Hilton's shoes either. I am rarely, if ever, purposefully cruel to anyone on that account.
Yes, I think your "saucer" analogy was silly in a wistfully winsome way, but you have a right to prefer your fine china stacked anyway you like. I would not mock you for that.(Heck, I would not even mock you for the bald with braces bit you had for your personal discription in your webpage, and that alone should show off my superior moral restraint) However people are not china. From China, yes. China, no. People are flesh and blood who have at bottom the same feelings, needs, and hopes. Its morally wrong to deny one group of people the same rights that another group*points a newly polished finger at Mr. Gnade at this point* happen to enjoy over purely religious grounds, or one's personal "Ick" factor. Thats all I am thinking of. Well, that, and if I have time to make potato salad for supper with the chicken. Hey, a (fashionably thin) woman's gotta eat once a day like everyone else.
Ciao,
Danni Lee Leonard
Dear Danni Lee,
You know I knew it was you, don't you?
I will let your answers stand alone. I have always considered you a friend, though I know that I failed to be much of one many, many times, to every person I've ever known. Who else could be writing with a name like Danni Lee Leonard, writing from a southern NH ISP; and who would draw some reference to my being a born-again Christian (though there is no reference to that 26-year-old news in this entire blog)?
I was mowing the lawn today with deep regrets. Not for anything I was doing to the lawn (it looks lovely); but for all the promises I made in innumerable yearbooks of the Class of 1979. I made promises of eternal friendship; of a kind of friendship only a messiah could fulfill. Alas, I am no messiah, no Christ.
Strange that I remember what you wrote to me in my long misplaced yearbook: that you bid me luck as I follow "that Gallilean". Oddly, I have had not much luck at all in even following my own heart, let alone a God, irrespective of your quarter-century old wish and my shining optimism in the year of commencement.
If you'd like a more private audience with me, please email me. My email address is found in my profile. I extend that invitation to anyone else as well.
Again, thanks for coming to Contratimes. You are always welcome. But I know you know that. There is nothing in me that has ever been anything else with you, though I will say that I have always been impatient with myself when we have spoken together. But you know why, and I'll leave it at that.
Peace, Danni Lee.
Bill Gnade
Class of 1979
ConVal High School
Vice President (and NOT voted most likely to succeed)
Danni Lee,
Oh, by the way. The only reason -- and I mean this -- that the other posts were deleted is because I am obsessed with good spelling. If I miss a misspelled werd, I get really annnnoyeddd, and their is know weigh I can correct those mistakes once the comment is posted. So, to meet the standards that border on OCD, I deleted posts that were, well, offensive in their imperfection. So don't be paranoid: there was nothing harsh.
Piece!
Aha! But with my superior feminine intuition I knew that you knew that I secretly knew that you knew who I was...er...am. Well, no, actually a sometimes painful sense of honesty (darn you, you church-going Irish-Catholic parents you!)compels me to admit that I did not think you knew who I was, as 26 years is a long time, and I have walked by people who knew me for years and they do not recognize me now.
But that was such a sweet sentiment you wrote! I went "Awww!' when I read it just now. But you can't be this serious if we're gonna have (polite, respectful...well, as polite and respectful as I can ever get)discussions like we were having. I don't offend easily. I also would not feel bad about anything which happened in the past, since in the truest sense of the word, its not really my past anymore, as it were.
Part of being a TS (At least for me) is you get (most)of the old memories, along with a new bod and a largely new personality. Its due to the brain being rewired by hormones which also allow various surpressed parts of the personality coming out while other parts largely vanish, so that the orginal persona is just a ghost in the machine as it were. Its kinda like when Ellen Ripley was cloned in the "Aliens 3" movie-all of the memories, along with all of the attitude too-no, wait, thats actually a kind of scary example (If somewhat accurate in my case)Ummmm...okay...(think hard here)...its sort of like the christian concept of being born again taken to the nth power, where you have two largely seperate lives, with two personas, one male, one female. The female one moves in, the male one goes off to be recycled to Brad Pitt in the next life.
Through I do see from a old yearbook in my apartment *cooly leafs through said yearbook* that my original male persona wasn't anyone I'd have a lot in common with now in any case, however, as you may or may not have gathered from my earlier postings. When I was writing those messages, it wasn't as(mostly) anyone whom you might have known once. Hopefully, I was not too rude. I gotta be careful about that, actually. Dealing with people who knew me...him...well, whoever, can be tricky now given the personality switches. In any case, think of this as a opportunity to have a culturally diverse new friend, with whom to thrash out such interesting issues as what we were discussing earlier. The same-sex saucer thing, that is, not the chicken and potato salad thing. Through we could discuss that too. I do toss a mean salad, as the stains on my ceiling can testify. *snicker*
Danni Lee Leonard
Danni Lee,
Thanks for the very engaging comments. I appreciate your wit and candor. I can assure you that I see no difference between the two personae you cite, as your sense of humor and perspective remind me very much of the Danny I knew.
Did I not tell you once, perhaps even in what I wrote in your yearbook, that you should be a writer? No, wait. I KNOW I told you. I always believed in the little I knew of you: the person I knew (admittedly a limited knowledge) always struck me as brilliant, deep, caring, and wise. Yes, the person I knew was also a bit impatient and angry, but who wasn't?
One thing I also recall is that I never apprehended (I am forever obtuse in these matters) that you were – as I've heard others say of themselves – a woman trapped in a man's body. You always struck me as all male, all the time. Clearly, I neither really knew the Danny you were, nor could I have guessed at the Danni you are now. That's just plain blindness on my part.
But, on the page, you are not formerly one person and currently another. I hear Danny as well as Danni. No doubt you have, as you admit, changed drastically over the years. I am glad that such a change has finally brought you the peace that I had no idea you were missing. And I am glad that you are happy. But Danny or Danni, it's just a spelling change in print.
I am wondering if you had any idea that I – after 26 years – might be a different person too.
Bill Gnade
Oh wow! I can see why your wife married you-you are just singing golden notes with the compliments!
The "brilliant, deep, caring and wise" discriptions, however, I'll leave to the judgements of those who know me...the writing, alas, has been washed away in the tides of time and estrogen. I am more like jock-woman now, with walking, conducting sales demos, dieting (No ice-cream for me in five years! Yay for willpower!)and hours and hours of power-shopping.
PS-honestly, given that my own changes are according to many in society, rather "radical", it never occurs to me that other people have not been frozen in time for the last 26 years either. But you still gotta explain to me that whole Hatfield-McCoy thing you got going on with you and the Unitarians. The Unitarian sect in Peterborough always seemed so well, blandly peaceful.
Danni Lee
Danni Lee
Post a Comment