about courage, heart and intuition
this past weekend my wife and i met her cousin sue at cafe mutton, our niece's restaurant in hudson, ny... after a delicious and wonderfully flavorful lunch...
after lunch we drove over to the main drag of hudson and went window shopping...
this sign was in a storefront window in hudson ny…
it’s astonishing how evocative of my experience of entering into trans feminine space i found it… it took enormous courage to begin presenting femininely in public and to make that transition in the context of a long term committed relationship where my partner might or might not be able to evolve with me… though i had some confidence that she could…
it was an interior-to-my-own-being force of nature that drove me on through each new escalation… each more-undeniable-than-the-last expression of my feminine intent… it was anything but a logical, thoughtful process… it was hard to know whether i was being courageous or being given no choice but to be courageous… it was a volcanic eruption coming from deep within… and like an eruption, it could not be held back… the sign in the shop window implied that we often ignore or override our heart and intuition… i think that’s true in many circumstances… but… i could no more have stopped the eruption than i could have stopped a barreling freight train… even so, as i have discovered reviewing my image making and writing over the past decade… and reviewing various proclivities expressed over the span of my long life… it wasn’t at all a sudden shift in direction… just as volcanoes don’t suddenly reach eruptive power… pressure builds steadily over long periods of time… until what contains it can no longer do so… there were hints over many years that i could head in this direction… there was steady building of powerful interior pressure welling up from the depths of my psyche… a steady welling up of longing within my heart and instinctual movement towards my heart’s expressive desires…
the rapidity of my feminine flowering once released took my breath away… three years on from the initial eruption, i find myself bathed in the “eternal mildness of joy” and wonder of it and my breath is taken away anew…