scenes from a (trans feminine) life, politics of glitter, scenes from the storm of humanity
yesterday i was grateful for time on my own and a new writing project…
today i am looking forward to photo editing and printing…
creative production is bursting out all over the place right now... for a couple of years i was turned in on myself, reworking my gender expression... an effort that consumed all available creative energy and discretionary spending capacity... though i am still evolving, i believe i have reached a steady state place that allows me to redirect creative energy to projects that express what i have been going through and how i feel about it... one project i recently started is a writing project i am entitling _scenes from a (trans feminine) life... it is essentially a journal written from a third person observational point of view... it could be written in the first person, but third person format feels more comfortable at the moment, and possibly more accessible to others... maybe you can drop me a note and let me know what you think of it and third vs. first person...
scene 2
before leaving for their walk, they ordered a v-neck bralette with removable pads; a t-back bralette with removable pads; and a v-neck, 3/4 sleeve shaping top… all from yummie… they had been exploring shaping garments for a while, with limited success in finding physical comfort… the only shaping garment they liked wearing all day was a padded bra from yummie, which gave them satisfying little hillocks on their chest and a pleasing sensation of compression around their torso and across their breasts, such as they were… it was outwardly subtle enough, they imagined, that most people didn’t notice… they didn’t need them to… it was their own inner sense of the feminine they were trying to evoke…
for some time they had debated the “ethics” of shaping and padding… what were they promising that they couldn’t deliver with these little hillock fictions?… they concluded that shaping garments exist because people, especially women, wished to sculpt themselves towards something they viewed as being more of whatever they wished themselves to be… that sounded exactly right in their own case…
they had no illusions about achieving feminine allure in the eyes and libidos of others… or that they might actually be taken as a woman… their age alone argued against the former, even as the unconvincing-in-that-way fiction of their presentation argued against the latter… but that was not the point… the point was how they wanted to feel themselves inhabiting the world… how could the way they dressed, padded and made themselves up further their immersion in the pool of feminine they so deeply desired to swim in?…
thinking about what they were experiencing, they wondered if it was similar for women in general… to shape or not to shape… was that a question women asked themselves?…
they had assumed that women dressed, when they dressed up, to be attractive to an established or potential partner… what they began to understand was that it was as much for themselves as it was for the benefit of potential mates… probably more so they thought… at least that was what dominated in their own case… they chose the under and over garments that best supported the sense of self they wanted to project… that helped them be who they wanted to be in the world…
throughout the time that their male persona had dominated, they had liked women to be a little provocative in their attire… they had liked a good show… and they had assumed the show, when it happened, was for their benefit… they now wondered if, even as women enjoyed being perceived as attractive, it was more important that they felt themselves attractive…
thinking about their journey towards the feminine, they remembered how uncontrollably compelled they had been to rebuild their wardrobe with dresses, skirts, leggings, and now shaping garments… this was not body dysmorphia so much as it was a deep and profound desire to participate in what they perceived as the feminine divine…
and now, as they thought those thoughts, they recalled a passage from Moby Dick…
“… we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the heart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we beheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive pods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round, like multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to shoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched the middle ones and so have gone round on their backs…”
they remembered that within the calm at the center of the commotion, Ishmail and his crew mates were visited by playful and curious calves, and, as they peered down past the calves they found pregnant and nursing mothers…
then came their favorite passage of the entire book…
“And thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and affrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the center freely and fearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely reveled in dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of my being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm; and while ponderous planets of un-waning woe revolve around me, deep down and deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.”
in this moment of contemplation, it struck them… that they had remembered and returned to this passage again and again because it was a verbal mandala who’s center was the feminine divine they had been seeking out… that this “eternal mildness of joy” was exactly what they experienced from their movement into the feminine and now, they realized, this was exactly the response they had to have to the mounting storm of humanity they found themselves in the midst of… they had been compelled to seek out and immerse themself in the calving center of the cosmos as the storm gathered and raged around them…
i found this article on glitter interesting...
The Unruly Politics of Glitter
Perhaps relatedly, glitter is often dismissed as frivolous. As Nicole Seymour notes in her 2022 book on the subject, it is “typically associated with marginalized identities and subject positions including children, girls, women, feminine people, drag performers, queer people, transgender people, and people of color — categories that, of course, overlap in various ways.”
notes from the storm of humanity...
Late last night, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted a video full of debunked claims about the 2020 presidential election that included an image of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their heads attached to the bodies of apes.
Predictably, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided the “fake outrage” over the image, but as Tim Grieve of NOTUS explained, when Republican senators Tim Scott of South Carolina, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi called out the racism behind the post, the president deleted the video and a White House official said that a “staffer erroneously made the post,” as if somehow a staffer could post random racist videos from the president’s account in the middle of the night. As soon as they could blame the post on a staffer, Republicans rushed to condemn the post’s racism.
Later tonight on Air Force One, Trump said that he had posted it himself. When a reporter asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
[...]
“This disgusting video, posted by the so-called president, was done intentionally. F*ck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an unhinged bottom feeder. President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, caring, and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. It’s time for John Thune, Mike Johnson, and Republicans to denounce this serial fraudster, who’s sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue pretending to be the president of the United States.”
yup...
a few images from my walk this morning...
