Questions to Queer

I never asked to be queer, but it is through questions that I found it.

What's Queerer?

  
It is a weird thing to find yourself one of a finite number. 18,000. My husband and I are one of 18,000 couples. What's queerer:

Being segregated from your own community by date?

Or not having these rights at all?

Or being a part of an institution that still doesn't recognize you?

Or believing that that institution has any validity or bearing on who I am?

Or not giving a fuck and claiming your own freedom?

Losing my personal narrative

I am trying to figure out what the story is I want to tell since my hours were significantly reduced off on June 30, 2009. So much has happened since then and so many learnings have been revealed to me that I find it difficult to find a way to express myself. All the hard work and long hours from March to June 2009 have taken away from me my communication center. I can't find the words of my personal narrative.

They, the words that is, are with me as I gently stroll through Golden Gate Park's AIDS Memorial or lay on my bed waiting for a nap or stay up with the youth on the last night of the Adobe Youth Voices Summit or wander the Des Moines Art Museum, but the moment I sit down with pen to paper they are gone. It is as if I am in a field of fireflies and my words are the tiny lights sparkling among the grasses. The moment I capture them in my glass Mason jar, they no longer carry with them the same brilliance or luster or magic. Sure, I can shake the jar and they spark for a moment, but they are not the same as their free and unrestrained brethren. They are not spontaneous or rhythmical or organic.

I am even having difficulties finding what comes next; what this paragraph should even be about. Should I write about the power of story to express complexity and voice? Should I write about the shift to more authentic and true shared leadership within the Youth Worker: Collective? Should I write about finally finding my fictional world maybe at the expense of personal narrative? Should I write about the slowing of my life and my resistence to quickening its pace? Should I...? The list is so long and overwhelming that I cannot choose, nor can I find a means to narrow.

In the past, this would have led me to not picking up a pen or opening a notebook. I would have let the overwhelmingness whiddle awy at my identity as a writer. I would have stared at the page and hoped words would write themselves. I would have turned on the television and watched People's Court.

Now, I find myself pushing through and not worrying about what actually comes out. I start with recording my wanderings and opening up to observations. I take my thoughts and fictionalize them into parables. I let my distractions guide me to the page. I still worry about cohesion and flow and grammar and spelling, but I do not let that interfere with the process of creating because I know a story is still waiting to be told.

Maybe the story here is that regularity and a slowing of the pace and the release of control to flow can and does bring change. Maybe it is that I no longer worry about a preconceived notion of a writer, adn therefore can claim it even when nothing makes sense. Maybe it is that I have many stories to tell and yet not all will be told. Maybe it is is nothing at all. All and more are possibilities.

As I sit here on a bench among the many dirt paths of Golden Gate Park, I smell the musty, humid forest air; I hear the whistling of a passerby mix with the panting of dog, the dongs of birds, the buzzing of insects, and the shuffling of feet against the sandy dirt and fallen leaves; I see the shifting of light as the sun passes in and out of the marine fog; I feel the rubber ridges of the pen in my hand and the dull itch of old mosquito bites. And I know that i am more present and aware then I have been in a long time. This brings me calm and peace. And maybe, just maybe that is the story that has just been told.

Questions from 2000

I originally wrote these questions in 2000. The inspiration for these questions came from the quote:

"Ultimately, the entire universe (with all its particles, including those constituting human beings, their laboratories, observing instruments, etc.) has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no fundamental status." (Synchronicity, Alan Combs and Mark Holland, (c) 1996, p. 12)

I am posting them here because I feel they share a similar sentiment to my current reflection on Leadership and the path I am on. It is amazing to see how we always loop back to ponder the same things.

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If we are all an interconnected "being", then analysis of the self shouldn't be our sole concern. In fact, it really shouldn't be our concern. And what impact does this have on the concept of free will? If we are to have choice, that means we are independent of each other. And yet with this argument we are clearly not independent but interdependent.

Conversely, free will does not negate that my choice has a direct impact on someone or something else. In fact, it may have a huge impact on the world as a whole, on the universe as a whole.

Take a look at the themes explored in His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass). Lyra's decisions, no matter how small they were, had a direct influence on the larger universe she was not originally aware of. Similarly, Neo's choices in The Matrix Trilogy also have larger implications throughout the world of both machines and the matrix. In the end of both stories, the prevailing triumphant theme is "love can overcome". What does that really mean? Can love overcome everything else? If it can, what is love?

Certainly it has to be more than just an emotion. It has to be some force that is larger than anything experienced by one person. If it is that large, is it the unifying particle that runs through everything? What does that really mean? What impact does that have on philosophy, physics, biology, religion, the universe?

Can love even be defined? What role does war and corruption and politics play in the larger theme of love? Are there any answers? Or are there more questions that are unanswerable to the human mind? If they are unanswerable, is there a point in posing the questions? And why do we always look for the answers? Why do we want everything wrapped up in a bow?

Is wrapping things up in a bow a Western concept? Is this phenomena of wanting complete resolution unique to the Western experience and culture? In the aftermath of Christianity/Judaism/Islam, we have found ourselves looking at things in a very similar way we look at this page - black and white. Is this acceptable? Is there more we do not know and yet insist we do?