Eclipsed

My thoughts sped by, felt but unfathomed, as I drifted numb to everything. Blissfully distracted from the endless distraction of thought, I allowed the noise to wash over me, and slipped into the depths of absolute silence. There was nothing to hold onto, and nothing bound to me. I knew nothing and understood; I found everything in myself. I was without boundaries, my naked soul undivided from the void and the incomprehensible things I encountered there. Sensations cascaded through my mind and ideas, frightening in their clarity, dissolved into fragments of understanding the instant they formed. The eye of the storm stirred with unclaimed dreams. Though I made no move to embrace them, I slipped blind into the one that swelled up and claimed me.

There was no sense of beginning as the illusion engulfed me, unfolding in a flicker of light, a shiver of cold, a flinch of pain—indistinguishable from a caress of pleasure—in an endless stream of disconnected sensations that slipped through me as fast as I fell away from them. Each impulse left a faint impression, a tiny ache of recognition out of which a sense of meaning was born. A hint of truth in the mystery, I discovered that they were all pieces of me, the ashes of my memories. Unfortunately, I had no idea how the glittering atoms of my mind fit together. All I knew was that I experienced a flicker of life each time a random connection was made.

I took a shuddering breath, and moaned, fighting against the impulse to wake.

The sensations coalesced into a dim world of unsettling objects that proved willfully unidentifiable. At a glance, the strange twilight would solidify into a place, but if I gazed too long at anything, it would begin to warp and waver, either changing into something else or dissolving before my eyes. Fragments of a dream that evaporated without a trace as I clung to unconsciousness, in denial of what I was already conscious of.

Once noted, I rejected that denial and forced myself to face the horror of what I had already sensed. I was hurt. I opened my eyes and confirmed the extent of the damage, a body burnt and maimed beyond recognition. I flinched away from traumatic memories of the cause. I saw nothing in what remained of me to indicate who or what I was. When I reached for it, the knowledge of who or what I had been was beyond recovery. I could not account for my survival, but finding my immediate surroundings equally devastated, I doubted I would encounter many other survivors. It looked like the end of the world. It was almost beyond description.

I had woken up in the remains of a concrete walled room, or what survived as the building it was part of had been blasted or torn from its foundations. The dark, bloody cavity of the sky loomed over a slaughtered world. The fields, foothills and distant mountains had been skinned, and shattered buildings had been chewed through to their splintered bones. It was painful to look at, and grim enough to compel me to see to my own wounds.

It took a while, but I found the supplies I needed. I cleaned and dressed my damaged flesh, promoting myself from zombie to mummy, and tried not to think about what it meant that I only felt the faintest echoes of pain. To say I was deep in shock could only be an understatement. I focused on practical thoughts and actions, because anything else would lead to screaming madness. Screw hope. Blind determination was the only thing that was keeping me going. Salvaging what little I could, I packed up and moved on.

I did not even contemplate staying where I woke up. The first thing I wanted to do was leave this devastation behind. I guessed that my best chance of survival would lie beyond the badlands. Given the state I woke up in, I was not surprised to find that my grip on reality was unreliable. As I pushed through the wreckage, I slipped in and out of consciousness, escorted by hallucinations. The most unsettling were the ones in which my body warped and wavered in its existence. At times, I would reach out, and even though I could feel my hands, I could not see them. Even when I could see them, they did not always remain mine. Without warning, it was as if parts of me became fused into the scenery and I would be forced to rip myself free of an arm or a leg to keep moving forward.

It gradually dawned on me that I could not distinguish between waking and dreaming. It was like a nightmare—the kind where I kept waking up inside a dream. I seemed to be doing the opposite, though, falling asleep and dreaming I was still stumbling forward in search of supplies, shelter and salvation. Day was an overcast twilight and night was unyieldingly dark. Because of my lack of coherence, time was impossible to mark. I always thought I was awake, and the only time I could tell I was dreaming was when things got impossibly surreal.

After a while, I began to wonder if this was what death was. It seemed much more like hell. Having no memory of life, or what I must have done to deserve this, only punctuated the feeling of damnation. I did not expect it would take long to descend into madness once I started to have thoughts like that. All I could do, however, was push forward, alive or dead, awake or dreaming.

I only knew peace when oblivion engulfed me. In its familiar silence, I understood, for lack of a better word, what it meant to be me. Rather, that understanding was me. In spite of whatever had happened to me, I still existed. It was enough to bring me back from the edge. In lieu of anything else, that glimmering truth sustained me, gave me focus. Even in the face of my nightmares.

In the grip of one, I found hope.

At the time I was stumbling through darkness, dreaming or awake, I could not know. I pushed on in mindless determination. I fought with despair and frustration, and above all I felt desperately alone. I tried not to think about it, but my sense of isolation had caused me to start seeing or sensing ghosts. Most were mere figments of imagination, just shadows or silhouettes of stone. Some of them were more of a presence, usually distant and remote. Others evaporated into nothing when I would approach. I had trained myself to ignore them by the time the first one spoke. I had sensed this one approaching, and dismissed it long before it came close. It stopped and seemed to regard me, when our paths finally crossed.

“Where are you going?” The words were soundless, intruding upon my thoughts.

Exhaustion muffled my shock. I slowly turned to confront the presence and had a hard time trying to define what I was sensing. It did not have a body, but it felt like a person was there. I cocked my head to ponder that and muttered the first thing that came into my head.

“You’re not like the other ghosts,” I rasped, barely making a sound.

“Nor are you, if you’ve seen them,” the ghost responded.

I stood for a moment without breathing. I swallowed, and asked fearfully, “Me? Are you trying to tell me I am dead?”

“I would not say that. Oh, the lives we once lived are over, but you and I, we’re not quite dead,” it clarified, its presence closing in around me. The contact was oddly comforting and unnerving. The way it projected words into my mind made me feel as if it could peer into my head. “It’s a good thing I found you. If you wander among the dead long enough, it will drive you mad.”

“What kind of ghost isn’t dead?” I demanded, thinking that this ghost was doing a good enough job of tipping me over the edge.

“Well, any soul that has not actually died,” the phantom declared.

I did not find that entirely reassuring. “I don’t understand. How does that apply to me?” I demanded.

“It means, you have been stripped from your body and your mind is trapped in a dream.”

“You have got to be kidding!” I cried out, half laughing. In spite of that, I was frightened. It was as good an explanation for what was happening as anything I’d want to believe.

“It’s better for you if you face it,” I was warned. “Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”

I hugged myself and turned away. “You mean, before I found myself here?”

“Yes. Or the last normal thing.”

“There’s nothing, unless any of this,” I indicated the world and the state I was in, “is ‘normal’.” My tone made it clear that it was not, as far as I was concerned. “I’m sorry, I just don’t remember,” I confessed, but somehow, it did not taste like the truth. There was a great deal I could remember, as long as it did not concern me. Given that kind of amnesia, and the fact that I was trapped in a dream, I was probably stuck in a coma. “I don’t really know what’s happened to me.”

“It looks like you got torn to pieces fighting to get free.” The observation was deeply upsetting. The words set my horror free. I tightened with apprehension, as I turned inward, unwilling, and was forced to see. The presence behind the words was the only thing supporting me, as I confronted the memory I had not been able to face. It was a memory of the very first time I was touched by another mind. I relived the moment it had seized hold of me and then thrust itself inside. It burned its way into every thought and feeling I possessed and then turned me inside out. Whatever else had happened, I now knew that my mind had been raped.

I hovered on the brink of remembering more, until I understood that I could not bear to. Not if I wanted to stay sane. I struggled to make sense of it, and on some deep level I suppose I did. It was not so much that I could not remember anything, but that my most important memories no longer belonged to me. They had been tainted by violation. The simple act of touching them filled me with a violent urge to tear myself free.

“What was I fighting?” I wondered, careful not to speak the thought aloud.

“You were fighting a demon,” the stranger informed me soberly and with sympathy, confirming that it was aware of my thoughts.

I did not want to believe any of it, but denial would lead me nowhere. My actions, and especially my reaction—tearing myself free of what my mind refused to remember—argued that I had endured something real, as well as unspeakable. It fit with my experience, and once I had accepted it, the implications were clear. I realized the horror in silence, “I will never wake up, again. Or, even if I could, I would not be me anymore. It’s either dream or be undone.”

“No. And, yes. I’m sorry,” the stranger confirmed, and comforted, stepping unexpectedly into focus, her body condensing from the mists of predawn twilight, and adding with an encouraging smile, “but you don’t have to dream alone.” As she moved, the air moved ahead of her carrying the strong scent of rain, wet rock and pine needles. These scents filled me and the landscape changed dramatically. The twilight turned into a stormy sky over a grassy meadow in the middle of a damp forest. The trees danced and twisted in the grip of a vengeful, howling wind. I stumbled back away from the woman and noticed that she stood poised on the edge of a cliff facing me. I hovered formless and insubstantial in the air above her, on the wrong side of the precipice.

“What is this?” I babbled in shock, gripped by vertigo, but discovering I had no body, I was unable to fall.

“This is the alternative to oblivion and death,” she explained, spreading her arms in a sweeping gesture that included a vast panorama of world and sky. When she turned back, she was smiling, and said, “This is what I am dreaming, and I am not the only one.”

I had a hard time tearing my attention away from the vibrant scene and focusing on what she was saying. “Not the only one?” I repeated, encouraging her to explain.

Instead of the response I expected, she asked me, “Do you know why demons try to steal souls?” When it took me too long to process the question, she expanded on it, “More importantly, did you ever wonder what happens to those poor souls? Well, I found out when a demon devoured mine. It took everything from me; my thoughts, my memories, my entire mind was devoured and digested as it swallowed my soul and took over my body. Only an echo of me survived, trapped in the darkest depths of the demon’s mind.”

I let her words play through my mind for a while, and she held silent while I thought. Clearly, I was supposed to understand that she was a victim, like me, but I was still struggling to fit demonic possession in as part of reality. It was not just that I wanted to deny it, but based on what I could remember, it did not seem to be something I had ever deemed possible. “I honestly can’t say I ever thought about it,” I confessed, focusing on the initial question. “Why do demons try to steal souls?”

“If you’ve had any religious studies, you may have learned that demons do not have souls of their own. The same is true of angels. The thing you might not know, however, is that they depend on souls to exist. They are dependent on the soul of their creator, or the soul of a host. A demon is really just an angel that has taken possession of the soul of its host,” she explained.

“You mean fallen angels,” I prompted, discovering that much in my memory of theological trivia. What she was telling me was not that far from what I had picked up in the course of my life. From what I could remember, even religious people tended not to take the idea of demons too literally. “That does not seem to fully answer your questions,” I noticed aloud. “If one soul will sustain it, why would a demon need more?”

She smiled. “That is an excellent question! It turns out that demons are after more than simple independence. Most of them crave autonomy. They want to have souls of their own.”

“I’m not sure I see the distinction,” I protested.

“They don’t always see it themselves. You see, it’s sort of an instinct. I suppose you could say, the demon wants a soul that fits. The problem is, the soul is the source of emotion, and souls that are dominated are full of anger and hatred and resentment at their enslavement and those emotions plague the demon and drive it,” she revealed.

I paused to weigh what she had told me, surprised by how much sense it made. It offered an explanation for the characteristics demons were supposed to have. It explained how, by simply falling, angels became so twisted inside. As it occurred to me, suddenly, the demon that had possessed me would act on my violent rejection in the world I was from. “Is there any way to stop it, or undo it? Or at least keep what I feel about it from driving it to cause harm?”

She gave me an odd look. “It’s been a long time since anyone even bothered to ask,” she said after a moment, with something like respect. “And it usually takes people much longer to figure that side of it out.”

I did not know what to say, so I said nothing.

“As it happens, that’s what I am doing. By giving souls an escape, I help distract them,” she confided. “It’s not really a way to stop or undo what has happened. You lost a lot to the demon, but the violence seems pretty much done with. It should be pretty calm, assuming you heal from the damage it’s done to you. Assume that it wanted to be you, and that it will be content with your life.”

That was disturbing and reassuring at the same time. Besides, it was not like I was in a position to do anything else about it. I tried to focus on the positive. I would not miss a life I had forgotten. Also, having my soul stripped out of my body by a demon and trapped with other souls in its mind, went a long way toward proving things my old reality could not sustain. Spirits and souls really existed, so dying g was much less frightening. Finally, I had been offered salvation, a refuge from certain insanity. I sighed and asked her, “So, how does one ‘share’ a dream?”

Exercise in Imagination

I just stumbled across a few things I wrote for a creative writing class I took this past spring to fulfill an elective requirement. One of the assignments involved writing a short story based on a work of art found online. I had no trouble thinking of one that sparked my imagination. The painting “Summer Comes” by Kyena was posted on DeviantArt on March 24, 2006, receiving special notice on April 12, 2006 as a “Daily Deviation” or a featured artwork on the popular artists’ community site.

The painting features a girl in a white summer dress in a windy field, holding the strings to two balloons behind her back. One balloon can be seen floating away in the background, where fluffy, white clouds are seen in a bright, blue sky. The point of view is from the ground, looking up through brilliant red flowers, and some of the petals are caught on the wind. It is not hard to imagine that the observer lies in the grass, fallen from his last, desperate attempt to catch the balloon that got away from the girl. The focus of his eyes is not on the distant, rising rogue; he gazes up into the girl’s face, observing the way the light caresses the side of her face and turns her hair to gold. As the subject of an exercise in imagination, this painting has great potential for testing the notion that a picture paints a thousand words.

Summer Comes…

I can still remember the day I met Elizabeth. We must have crossed each other’s path a hundred times the morning of the May Festival, oblivious to each other in the crowds. In among the tent stalls where a turbulent river of humanity divided carnival style games from street-fair merchandise, it was too easy to become overwhelmed. Desperate to escape from the deafening sea of laughter and incoherent chatter, I set off across the field to where my family had settled for our picnic. The sun was being generous with its touch, but stiff, steady breezes relieved the heat of the late spring day. The bright green grass and brilliant red blooms danced, full of the promise of summer. As I walked through the tall grass, the ribbon of the balloon tied to my wrist suddenly came unraveled. The wind seized the flighty thing and I turned and ran back the way I had come in pursuit.

It was a short chase, more of a running leap to grasp the end of the string before it slipped out of my reach. I missed and came crashing to the ground. In defeat, I sprawled face down in the grass and sighed over my loss. I’d had plans for that helium; I never tired of the effect it had on my voice! My disappointment was forgotten an instant later as clear, crystal notes of laughter washed over me. I began to push myself up to glare at the person who dared to laugh at my folly, and confronted a vision in a white summer dress.

The wind tugged on the light fabric as she approached me, holding the strings to two captive balloons behind her back. She had a serious look on her face, showing concern in the wake of laughter. “Are you alright?” she inquired, as I looked up at her from behind the crimson blooms.

The loose ends of the ribbon swaying in the breeze drew my eyes to the string of pink flowers in her hair. I took a deep breath and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine,” I told her, tearing my gaze from her face watching the balloon I had been chasing make good on its escape. I could still feel its ribbon slipping though my fingers during the last leap of my pursuit. “I almost had it on that last jump,” I declared, rising to my feet and dusting myself off.

“It’s just a balloon. No need for any heroics,” she chided me, turning, hands still clasped behind her back holding the strings of her tame balloons as she watched my rogue dance and leap in the wind. Shifting her grip on the leashes of her helium pets, she brought her right hand up to shade her eyes. “It doesn’t take them very long to get up there, does it?” she asked rhetorically as the balloon turned into a faint speck in the sky.

“It was a pretty quick getaway,” I agreed, stepping up beside her and giving the speck a jaunty, farewell salute.

She laughed and reassured me, “Don’t worry, there are more where that one came from.”

I nodded and then smiled, “I was planning to go back after lunch.”

She tilted her head and then looked down the path toward the impromptu picnic grounds. “Are you here with your family then?” she asked.

I nodded again. “Are you?” I probed, unable to read her expression.

She shrugged and then shook her head. “They’re not really the picnicking type. I just had to get away from the crowd.”

I laughed. “I know what you mean,” I told her, glancing back toward all the noise and excitement. I had the unsettling feeling that this conversation was reaching its end. There was only so much you could say to a person in passing, and no guarantee you would ever bump into the same stranger twice. I took a deep breath and before I lost my nerve, I blurted, “Well, if you’re hungry, you’re welcome to join us. I’m sure my Mom brought too much of everything.”

She gave me a wary look. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t even know your name.”

I nodded and let out the breath I had been holding. It was not quite a sigh, and running a hand through my hair, I apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. My name is Morgan.”

“Nice to meet you, Morgan,” she responded, giving me a quick grin before offering her own name. “I’m Elizabeth.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Elizabeth,” I replied with exaggerated gravity and a faintly British accent. I could tell from the way she was chewing on her bottom lip and edging away that she was about to excuse herself. I did not get the feeling that I had done anything too forward. I had the feeling that she was tempted by my invitation, but cautious. I pointed across the grass to where my family was settled down on a blanket, “We are having lunch right over there if you happen to change your mind.”

She followed my finger and gave my family a good look before she turned to respond, “Thank you. Maybe I’ll stop by to say hi before I go back to the festival.”

“That would be great. Thank you, Elizabeth!” I grinned and with a slight nod I backed off a few steps, watching her eyes, before I turned and walked on. I could feel her gaze on me as I walked away. I did not see her again that day; in fact, I did not see her again for months, but we were barely thirteen that first meeting. It is an awkward age for starting new relationships, but the years ahead of us were filled with opportunities that we might not have recognized if not for that first, awkward encounter.

Source
Kyena. (March 24, 2006). “Summer Comes…” Digital Art. Paintings & Airbrushing. Fantasy. DeviantArt.com. Retrieved online March 27, 2009.

Matter and Movement in Four (or more) Dimensions

These days, it only takes a little curiosity, access to the Internet, and a bit of patience to find explanations of progressive spatial dimensions or examples of four dimensional geometry, such as the old favorite the hyper-square. Some of the things you will find use analogies like Flatland, or animations which is a way of using time and motion to reveal a higher dimensional object using a lower dimensional cross section — the advantage of this kind of intersection or interface is the ability to scan through what is too dense to actually see through. In this way, we can emulate the ability to observe, say, the details of the internal structure of a three dimensional body in a manner similar to seeing it directly from the fourth dimension. Of course, we did not have to wait for the invention of magnetic resonance imaging to be able to perceive the insides of our bodies; our sense of touch gives us the closest thing to a physically four-dimensional perception. Our kinesthetic or spatial sense is annexed to our visual perception to give us an integrated sense of physical reality. In addition, we supplement our active field of vision with the memory of what we have previously seen, and studies on perception have revealed that we often rely more on our visual memory than our active sight in familiar settings. This ability to fill in the blanks around us is one that we can use to “see” into higher dimensions.

In the mind, it is possible to construct things in four or more dimensions, but that does not tell us if there are any objects in the universe that are constructed in four or more dimensions. Taking the example I gave of eight-dimensional time-space, we could surmise that the universe has height, width and depth in a kind of cellular structure in which every moment in time exists in strands of continuity along branches of probability in a network of possibility where multiple event paths lead to and away from any give moment. The instant is where-ever you happen to be focused on eternity. Time-travel would be non-paradoxical because time itself would be process based, a product of attention. The event you experience would largely be determined by the state of mind you are in as you approach the moment, so causal time would probably be the norm; that is the path of least resistance. The real challenge to time travel would be presented by the body and its influence on attention. As a three-dimensional spatial construct, the body predisposes us to move through time as a byproduct of moving through space. To arrive at a specific point in space and time, without transiting the intermediary space and time, would break the perceived continuity of events unless one could perceive space four dimensionally–in which case the intervening space was bypassed in an instant of time. The mind can conceive of four-dimensions internally, but the real question is, how would you move the body through a fourth-dimension externally?

A question like this is a question about matter as it relates to space. Among the things physicists know, matter occupies very little space and is distinguishable from energy only by structure. Attempts to understand the structure of matter has led to the identification of elemental atoms, primary particles and fundamental quarks; the last taking us down into the realm of quantum mechanics. In the process of getting down to the quantum level, physics has also run into fundamental forces, the electric and magnetic forces, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. These are all things that can be observed or inferred to exist based upon experimental observation, and for all that is known about them, there is much that is still not understood. The one aspect of matter that has captured my interest most often is the characteristic of mass and its association with gravity. A particle with mass is infinitesimally small and produces (or focuses) a force that has infinite range (though the strength of the effect diminishes over distance in a known, inverse-square ratio). Unlike electric and magnetic forces which are polarized, or both attract and repel, gravity seems only to attract and does so in a “like to like” fashion.

The “dent in space” model of gravity gets me thinking, as anyone who read my post on Gravity in a distributed, process driven, information-based Universe could tell. Einstein gave us the equation summarizing the relationship between matter and energy, but by itself, the equation does not explain what is really happening when energy is concentrated into mass. We have to ask, what is happening to the energy, and part of the answer lies in understanding how a point of mass is focused into a stable object and why that deforms the space around it. The answer is further complicated by the specific structure and electromagnetic properties of a given particle. Particle physics is a whole field of study unto itself, and if the great minds devoted to it will pardon me, outside the complexities that might be explored, the simple observation is that structure holds the answer. Energy is concentrated and structured into a more complex and dynamic state in which we find a focal point in three-dimensional reference and forces that produce one-dimensional (polarity), two-dimensional (surface tension, surface area), three-dimensional (height, width, depth) and four-dimensional (mass, gravity, inertia, vector) effects. There is so much going on, all of it debatable, but I always come back to the four-dimensional view of matter.

I would have to have a great deal of time and a decent amount of resources to formulate something more substantial from this speculation. I am sure there is a great deal more information available that could affect the assumptions I have about pervasive energy, pervasive space, particular matter in infinitesimal space, concentrated energy, mass, structure, gravity, spatial displacement, fields, force, electron shells, magnetic shells, and light. I have the interest and the fascination to keep probing and a desire for more reliable speculation, but until I find an opportunity to devote myself to it, I can only work with the insights I have now. The implication of four-dimensional structure in matter, or the idea of atoms as four-dimensional objects, does not make our world any less a three-dimensional environment. That is, matter may only be possible at the three-dimensional surface of a four-dimensional substrate of energy and space. There are particles that seem to spontaneously pop in and out of existence, if some of the reading I’ve done on particle and quantum physics is correct, and that might be an indication of structure transecting our three-dimensional “plane” but most atoms seem to be pretty well stitched into place.

I am not as confident in speculating on how energy and structure “bind” but that is what I see as a likely basis for fundamental forces. The forces seem difficult to understand or explain, but part of that is because the concept presents us with an inherent mental block. A concept allows us to hold onto an idea about an observed phenomenon, but in the act of grasping an aspect of reality in that way, we focus on the effect and become unable to see the cause. Stepping back and looking again, we might be able to see that what we call a force is simply a particular way the balance of energy in a structured system must behave to achieve stability. Seeing that way, we can begin to ask what imposes structure and how does it persist either as part of or apart from energy. The question brings me back to a notion I had about the nature of limits and how that impacted the perception of substance and solidity. If matter is mostly empty space, what keeps things from constantly falling through each other? The substance of matter is not in the mass, but in the repulsive forces of the electron shells of atoms. The thing that makes the world seem solid to our touch is the existence of forces associated with particles that prevent them from actually touching.

There is a great deal more needed in a comprehensive analysis of matter, but this is enough to return to the question of moving a body through four-dimensional space. A common observation is that an infinite number of objects of a given dimension can exist in an object of the dimension above it, being in effect an image of itself, but it would take the action of an entity acting in the higher dimension to manipulate or move the object through that hyper-space. In my example of a person attempting to jump from one position in space-time to another position in space-time without transiting the intervening space, either an outside agent would have to be involved, native to the higher dimensions, or the person would have to be constructed in four- to eight-dimensions to begin with. Not really a problem for the mind, assuming the mind is not exclusively internal to the body. The hard part, for a mind rooted in a physical body in a world such as ours would be figuring out that it did exist in more dimensions and that this enabled it to move through space and time in ways that transcend the physical limits of the body. No tool or technology grounded in the physical world would be of much use in discovering or exploiting this fact. Not that you could not discover it by accident if the mind should happen to wander; though you would have a hard time distinguishing random moments scattered over infinite probability from dreaming.

Hidden in Plain Sight

On April 27, 2008 at 12:36 am, I began a post — this post, actually — but got no further than the title. I don’t know if that was because that title summed up my feelings so well that there was no point to writing any further about what was on my mind. Yesterday, those words came back to me at the conclusion of A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox. I’ve always though of the truth as something that is hidden in plain sight, and approached it as something that we take so much for granted we really don’t know what to do with it. One might as well say that the truth that can be put into words is not the truth. Communication is more a matter of interpretation, and there is no singularity to interpretation. The truth is out there, and every time we encounter it, we are seeing it from a limited point of view. When we come across it again from a different point of view, we still recognize it as the truth but it not only appears different, we ourselves understand it in a different context.

As I said yesterday, I consider myself to be hidden in plain sight. There are days when it is not hard to think of myself as a very high functioning autistic, because the person I really am has almost no connection to the real world; I rely on an artificial mental construct to interact with people around me. The better that construct is, the more disassociated I actually am. As much as I hate the effect this has on me, and as much as I view it as evidence of my acquired distrust of people, I can see it as simply a more extreme form of social persona that is created by each person to deal with other people. We do not expect to be accepted for who we really are, and so we lie to gain acceptance. Little white lies, for the most part, and no one really thinks much about it. Of course, they hurt us, and this manner of hurting ourselves gives rise to shame and guilt over the lying and the possession of undesirable traits. So, maybe we all try to hide in plain sight.

By that, I mean, we try to conform. I obscured myself that way. The problem with conformity is that you have to believe in the existence of a norm. In that vein, I once looked at social gender constructs and human nature and concluded that each of us must be heir to all of human potential, so it was perfectly normal for a man to have many feminine traits that had to be denied in order to become a man. Because of social gender constructs, it was a natural if unfortunate consequence that men who possessed a number of so-called feminine traits would end up with dangerous inferiority complexes, both to conform to the social ideal of masculinity and to condemn in each other what they were insecure about in themselves. The problem with this assumption was that it implied that we have to choose but we do not have a real choice. In nature, any option that is not fatal is viable. In honesty, society would probably benefit most from men who possessed more “feminine” characteristics, and the men would probably be happier and healthier as well.

I conformed to the expectations of people around me because it was clear to me what would happen if I did not. When I really thought about it, it became obvious to me that the thing that messed society up so much was the perception of social ideals that ultimately favored one tiny group of self-justified elites. But, if that’s not who you are, you can never be happy trying to conform to that false ideal. I’ve seen a lot of people try to take advantage of these social constructs to pursue power, whether in the form of money, fame, or politics, but this is no path to happiness or enlightenment. This just reinforces the system that abuses the people under its influence. A warped social system is as responsible for creating and perpetuating the illusion of poverty as it is the illusion of prosperity. If you cannot fit in and thrive while being true to yourself, you can never gain anything from taking part. I learned that the hard way. I played the part I was expected to, only to have the life sucked out of me. If I had been paid in proportion to the personal cost of my sacrifices, I’d have billions by now.

Instead, I’ve got a hole more than deep enough to bury myself in. I have been shocked awake, as if by some near death experience, and I can no longer deny the truth of myself no matter how much of a misfit it makes me. I have to be true to myself, even if that means I have no hope of stable employment, even if it means I cannot function in the environment that would provide stable employment. I should be honest, I don’t want any job that I would have to lie to get or play a role to hold on to. I know that will only push me off the deep end. I am beginning to think that there is no place for me in the world of deep thinking, though it’s probably where I belong. I have always known that people have to figure out the important truths for themselves. It never hurts to write about them, to give people food for thought; once in a while, what you can write down is enough to lead someone else to their own epiphanies, and I’ve had enough of my own to map out a few promising paths. I would love to keep on exploring the frontiers of consciousness, but I just don’t have the right backing. I am not catching anyone’s interest.

I usually do not worry about the fate of humanity. I know that the truth is there for anyone who wants to see it; I know that people often see what they want to see, or use what they see to justify what they think, but as long as people are still curious and confront the paradox of death seriously, they can get past the usual mistakes and still get to the point. I was originally more interested in finding my own miracles and being able to point out precisely how they worked in the event I was able to solve my own problem using them. I have to pursue transformation because failing to would mean living a meaningless life and dying a meaningless death. That realization is part of what undermined my attempts to write fiction simply to support myself. I would much rather live the kind of story that comes to me than simply write it. I would rather be working actively toward my own salvation. I would rather be fighting for my soul. I would rather face the moment of my death with a smile and an understanding of what that step in the dance of life really was, and if necessary, be able to step around it.

I am not afraid of the prospect of oblivion, but I do find existence worth holding on to, even if I have to change it to make it work right. It’s a good idea and one that needs a lot of improvement, and while I may not be well equipped for that, I still want to work on it. I might have once tried to save the world, but it takes all of us to o that, so I am going to focus on ideas that might help people save themselves. I once said, “if you want to make the world a better place, you need to make better people” but I’ve revised that second part to, “you need people who want to make themselves better” and since you can’t force people to be better, you have to give them what they need to improve on their own. Society does not serve that purpose, but people can work inside of society to benefit more people. I was kind of hoping there would be people with resources and no ideas on the lookout for someone like me — I’m doing this one way or the other, with support or without, but… yeah, support would be nice — but I can see how hard it is now to believe in a single voice lost in the roar of the surf.

Thanks to the Internet, I simply have one more way to be hidden in plain sight. It’s not quite as bad as being the needle in a haystack, and at the same time it’s as bad as not being the only needle in the haystack. I really do not have much care for money, I have never been much motivated to make it since its not really the solution to the problems that really matter to me. I could use money to transition, to travel and do research, set up a better studio and information system, but most of the money I’ve made in life has been only good for paying for rent, food and bills. Most of the people I’ve known on a personal level have been in the same position. I have taken whatever work I could get to keep up with the bills. The problem is, I passed the point where I don’t care anymore. I want to keep working on some of the questions I am forever asking, and I want to share my observations still, but I am no longer afraid of homelessness and death, not enough to make the personal sacrifices I’ve made in the past for the privilege of starvation wages. If nobody sees me, if nobody hears me, if nobody really cares, that’s fine. If you didn’t notice I was here, I understand.

I have tried to ask for help. I’ve tried to catch people’s attention, and I’ve tried to put something worthy of interest out there for you. I have a lot more, but I am running out of time. I have to say that now, while there’s still a chance. I have to ask strangers for help like this because I am too inward bound to know how to get attention from the right people, people who can get what I am saying, who can see where I am going and who feel that it is as important as I do. The truth is hidden in plain sight, and so we overlook it every day. I think it’s past time we stopped and looked into it. I think it’s essential for us to survive and grow. I think that anyone who has confronted the prospect of oblivion should know better than to ignore the implications that are all around us. I think it is time we took our imagination and intuition as seriously as our reason. I think it is time we took our wishful thinking and stripped away the whimsy, and made a serious study of doing the impossible. Lots of people have dreams, but my dream has always been to achieve realization. The only way to do that is to be able to go beyond our normal thinking, and that is the stumbling block most people fall over. I can hardly get through the day without tripping over myself, but give me any other stumbling block and I can fly right over it.

A Glimpse into the Eye of Paradox

On any given day, a small handful of people find their way to the eye of paradox. Some of them probably just glance at an article to see if it’s relevant to the search that brought them here. One or two might actually read something. Once in a blue moon, someone leaves a short comment. Taken all together, I do not see anything to indicate that my words mean much. Is that frustrating? A little. I think it only bothers me because I have so much on my mind all the time, and there seems to be little or nothing I can do with it. I have to ask myself, what am I really accomplishing here? I’ve said it before, I tend to write in the hope of provoking a little thought, usually because the inspiration to write is interesting in itself. I do not expect anyone else to find the result as interesting; partly because it is hard to capture a thought perfectly in words. I am not a thousand-word-a-minute typist and yet I seem to think a million miles a minute. I am not a linear thinker. My thoughts are more like a library in a hurricane. I have never really been able to explain it, but it’s what I mean when I talk about higher-dimensions of thought. The problem with that terminology is that we would all probably assign the dimensions differently, based on the way we think. I suspect that a lot of us think things out in words as a general rule, that good old internal dialogue. I have one, but it’s only one part of how I process information.

I think that most of what I think cannot really be put into words. Seriously, I find it easier to think in worlds. Every instant my brain is processing sensory data to assemble an endless stream of consciousness that ties what I perceive in the moment with things I have perceived in the past, things I imagine, things I have conceptualized, things I have analyzed, things I have articulated, things I intuit and things I have only imagined. I have this notion that I ought to be an author because stories come to me in bursts of instantaneous thought. The problem is that it takes so long to fully articulate one I will have conceived of a thousand variations in the time it takes to block out the basics of the one I started with. The sheer number of options and variations overwhelms me. I don’t find it surprising, however. This is what our brains evolve to do; in life we only get one chance to get anything right, and there are a lot of times when a mistake will cost you your life. When faced with a challenge, we automatically engage the imagination and run through as many simulations as our intelligence and attention allow. A good view of the future requires at least seven dimensions of thought. Our base line of reference is four dimensional (working in three spatial dimensions and one temporal dimension) and we have to be able to project that image forward to assess the consequences of our actions through to positive, neutral and negative outcomes.

The future is not on a straight line. Neither is the past, really. An individual has no problem seeing history as a line running back through events, but there is such a line for every person and every object involved in every interaction. The past that we perceive is not the only past. For any given instant, there is a conceivable alternate path leading up to it, though usually the only people who are aware of this are people involved in reconstructing events. To a lesser degree, anyone who mulls over the days of their lives will notice the variable paths within the repeating cycle. You can stop, while walking down the street and suddenly put yourself on the other side of the street in some memory. It is one of the reasons we like routine. The more times we go through a sphere of activity, the better we understand the possibilities of acting in that sphere. We use it to maintain a hypersphere of potential activity. We use something similar in the mastery of our own bodies. At any given moment, there is only one position we can be in, but we are aware of all the positions we can move to just in the limits of our own bodies. In a sense, you could say that this is the real difference between the physical nature of something and the spiritual nature. We can only ever see one instance of an object, but that one instance contains the potential of every instance of that object. When you can look at an old man and see the little boy he once was, that is a very spiritual perception.

The funny thing is that we have run into this same thing in quantum physics, the notion that things have potential that exceeds what can be manifested at any given point. In the mind, we can hold onto everything at once, seeing nothing but aware of it all, and pull whatever we want into focus in an instant. I really don’t find it surprising that reality is pretty much the same way. We work constantly to bring the world into focus, we are in a constant process of realization, learning about changes in the world and updating our own internal representation accordingly. This is how we maintain our grip on the universe, and also how the universe maintains its grip on us. Or, this is how we maintain our grip on ourselves. This is a good spot to focus on if you take the question “who am I?” seriously enough. This is where I ended up after years of asking that question in an attempt to determine if it was who I am or what I am that makes me “me”. I came to the same conclusion the characters in the Matrix did, the body cannot live without the mind. Perhaps that is an indication of gestalt consciousness, an indication that the mind is more than the sum of the body’s parts? I am still thinking on that. In the meantime, while I find myself in the universe’s grip, there is an omniverse of information in my grip. I am holding the universe in a firm mental grip, but at the same time I am holding on to many, many more in my thoughts. Of course, I might just be apprehending the possibilities of the universe that would be found in higher dimensions.

What kind of sense organ would be able to perceive higher dimensions? I do it in my mind constantly, so I would be inclined to say the brain is that sense organ, as I rush along in the wake of intuition, chased by thoughts of perception being our key to acting in our environment. I grasp all of the implications of movement in higher dimensions of space and time and cannot keep up with the possibilities that seem to open themselves up. I am riding on an epiphany, a realization of a universe that contains infinite potential. What kind of words could begin to describe it? I struggle to find them, even now. I struggle to find the time to think things through enough to achieve a less dizzying perspective. This is my true field of study, and all I can do is stand at the threshold and stare into it longingly. The irony is, we’re all at this threshold. It’s kind of like the best kept secret, because it’s hidden in plain sight. I think the only reason I noticed it is because I am too.

The Price of Dreams

“We never remember the beginning,” she said quietly. “We pretend not to know why—but then that is one of our favorite tricks, isn’t it?” she glanced up at me, smiling at my confused silence. With her arms crossed she began to drift about the room, examining objects while continuing this strange introduction. “We pretend not to know many things. We can even pretend not to know the truth. The horrible truth. But the beginning?” she paused and met my eye in the mirror. “Well there is an explanation for that one. We never remember the beginning because there never was a beginning. That’s one of those horrible parts of the truth we choose to miss.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Her choice of words—the horrible truth—bothered me inexplicably. I wanted to argue with her; I wanted to point out the fact that there are many beginnings and how easy it is to remember most of them. The urge to argue was so strong that I felt suspicious of it. She turned to face me, and the look she gave me made me feel like I had asked the wrong question. She was waiting for my argument. But, before I could think of the right question to ask, she spoke.

“You know what I mean.”

For a moment I didn’t know if she was answering the question I had asked or the question I was thinking: What horrible truth? Or were they the same thing?

“We never remember the beginning,” she went on, not even sparing me a second look, “until the very end; because there is no end either. None of which makes sense, of course, until you risk looking at the truth. I wish I could tell you that truth. Honestly.”

“You can,” I assured her, hoping for something to define this conversation.

She smiled to herself. A rather frightening smile. “You can’t tell people things they already know. Or think they know. How am I supposed to tell you something you think you don’t know?” She laughed. It was a mesmerizing sound. “Knowing the truth is deceptively easy. It is like listening to what people say. Not just hearing their voice, but realizing what they are saying to you.”

She wasn’t looking at me. I doubt she was looking at anything in particular. It struck me suddenly that she was posed in the perfect expression of listening. So when she spoke again, it startled me.

“You can’t make people listen to you without tricking them. The truth is the same way. The only difference is that the truth is a constant. It doesn’t have to repeat itself.”

“What?” I asked, almost solely out of reflex; as if by being startled I might have missed something important.

“We never remember the beginning,” she said quietly, precisely as she had before. I looked at her with a frown, but she carried on without regarding it. “We pretend not to know why—but then that is one of our favorite tricks, isn’t it? We pretend not to know many things. We can even pretend not to know the truth. The horrible truth.

“But the truth?” she held that in the air a moment, and looked at me pointedly. She held up her hands for emphasis. Realizing that the question was not rhetorical, I nodded. “The truth is,” she measured out her words, “I can remember the beginning.” Before I could ask the beginning of what she cut me off with a gesture, and resumed the pose of listening. This caused an agitation in me. I have never considered myself an insensitive man. Indeed I have prided myself on my sensativity to the subtlest of cues. As a child I was so sensitive that there were times I could not distinguish my own thoughts from those of people around me. I don’t know where such thoughts could have come from, but my best guess has been that I read their state of mind so well from their body language that I thought sympathetic thoughts for them. What am I driving at? Well, at that moment, her gesture struck me so suddenly she might have just as well screamed listen! at the top of her lungs.

That shock made it clear to me that she was communicating deliberately on many levels, verbal and non-verbal. I brought my mind into focus and met her eye. Her body was governed by a poise unlike anything I had known. Without a word, she managed to express her awareness of my realization. My eyes widened and she nodded with the faintest smile. The clearest thought chimed in my head, ears hear, but the mind listens… the mind listens with every sense and it becomes a sense. Can you read my mind? I was nodding my head before I even thought to question the origin of the thought.

I fell into a quiet of mind; a state of heightened awareness. I didn’t have to question what beginning she was talking about, because suddenly it was obvious what beginning we are each oblivious to. The beginning of awareness; of our selves. She smiled broadly at me and nodded assertively. Without further distractions she continued her story.

“Oh, I can call it the beginning because I can remember before that moment… I remember that I could have prevented what happened. I could have done anything else in creation, but once begun there was nothing I could do to stop it. Because at that moment I changed. Oh, I want to say that it was indescribable, but what happened to me was so vivid, so utterly real that it replaced creation in my own mind.” She writhed against the limits of the words; a movement at once seductive, sensual and painful. Her attention seemed to withdraw from the world into some all consuming inner vision. “It was the moment I saw creation in the minds of the others.

“And there at the center of everyone’s attention was me,” she whispered. I felt a horrible echo of her meaning as I felt her at the very center of my own attention. Even she was caught up unselfconsciously in the lure of that powerful suggestion.

“It sounds simple, but it could not have been,” her voice sounded contemplative. Remote. “On the other side of the beginning there had been a flicker, the slightest glimmer in the corner of my eye. I had barely noticed this thing, a suggestion of measurable complexity,” she began to look entranced, her words coming out as if across a great distance of time. “I knew instinctively that I understood this thing, even before I had identified it. It came to me like a sensation. Unfolding and embracing me. Growing in detail and possibilities before my awakening curiosity. With growing delight I chased this wondrous image, a dream promising to fulfill all I could desire. It tested everything I could understand. I even understood who the others were. I knew them as well as I knew myself. And then I knew something was wrong. And I knew it was too late.

“There it was. My understanding laid bare before me and at once I could tell that it exceeded my consciousness. The others had held up a mirror to my mind’s eye and shown me nothing more than myself. Conscious now of the memory of that pure unconscious understanding I was changed.

“That I should embrace death so! That death is a sudden rude awakening!” she clenched her fist and eyes tightly; caught up in the pain of this memory. It was all I could do not to interrupt. I had to resist the disturbing notion that I was listening to some kind of poetic drama rather than an experience from her life. In her stance I read her frustration; the kind of agitation of a person who simply cannot find words to express an idea or a feeling.

“To become so sharply aware of myself and understand in that moment that I knew nothing,” she confessed, abandoning her tension. She rested her figertips against her temples as she went on, “Here in my naked mind there were no concepts or thoughts by which I might harness this understanding. And yet, my first memory is a moment of self conception. There in the light of this limitless understanding I thought, this is me.”

She paused and turned to look at me directly. I had the palpable feeling that she had stepped back into reality a moment to comment, “You remember your first thought, because you are your first thought. That is the secret. At first you are incapable of thought. You look at the world passively for eternity, then suddenly you realize you are there. You have defined yourself apart from the world, so naturally you begin to try to define the world. You try to fill the void; you begin to think. Analyze.” She shuddered, “Unless you are conceived in doubt. God help those who begin with the thought: this is not me. How powerless that must make you feel. To recognize the world but fail to recognize yourself…” She trailed off and became distant again.

“Then,” she resumed, as if she had not interrupted herself, “I turned and really looked at the others. I can remember their experiences of that time as well as my own because at that moment I was aware of them only in the sense that they resembled myself. I was only aware of their minds; I was only aware of them as what they understood. I understood this, and I understood them. Understanding them, I understood what they knew and in that second breath I knew. I knew in a limited fashion that this assumption of their knowledge was barely within the limits of their conception. However, their knowledge brought me only confusion. Unlike the constant sensation that came with my self awareness, or the understanding from which I had been embodied, there was nothing definite, certain or clear about the connection between what they knew and what they understood. By the time I could grasp the meaning of what I had glimpsed I no longer had any kind of advantage. I lacked so much experience. In fact I was forced to realize that my existence was in danger.

“Sensing this, knowing it as surely as I can know anything, I wonder if I am truly any different from anyone else. Do I really remember this moment I call the beginning or have I, like the rest of them, dared that unforgivable error and looked too closely at the truth. Do I suddenly see the beginning so clearly because I have reached the end of my existence?” she stopped abruptly, startled by her own words. Suddenly her story seemed forgotten, and she visibly began to reconsider what she had begun. Smoothly, swiftly she swept over beside me and sat on the couch facing me. “Is that why I have hidden here among those who are aware of the existence of god the way we are all aware of the truth? Fearfully unexamined?” she asked me, the first honest question she had asked me since our initial meeting. Showing an honest need for an answer from me. So specifically from me that part of my soul ached. “Do I ask you to help me write this only because I fear that in my future I will not be there to represent my own story?”

I could have come up with an answer, and yet I felt it imperative to silently drive her to her own counsel. I recalled the brief conversation that had brought us together. She had been looking for an author. Someone who could tell her story for her, because—mysteriously—she was forbidden to write it herself. I was flattered by her confession that she had sought me out particularly, deliberately ignoring opportunities to approach established writers in favor of me. I was not bothered by her stipulation that while she dared not write a word herself she had to have absolute say over whatever form it took. Far from chaffing at this limitation, I realized how closely we would have to work to fulfill this request, and she was—literally—the woman of my dreams. When she added that not only could she have nothing to do with the actual writing, she could not take any credit or particularly any profits for the completed work. It was such a strange request that I had to at least find out if there was a story to tell. With the little I had heard so far, unintelligible as it was, there was indeed a story. It didn’t matter suddenly if it was a real story about a real life.

A thought like that, just at that moment, was more than enough to make me check the state of my sanity and empathize deeply with the suggestion of mortal peril on the part of this young woman. I had no doubts that this was a far out story so far. Yet it seemed obviously very real to her. So questioning the reality of the story was tantamount to questioning her reality.

And yet I did not care about such a question. The story was important in its own regard, and I had to be totally impartial about the source of it.

But these thoughts did not pass in an instant as they so conveniently do in books.

She had come to some conclusion on her own in the silent moment. Her eyes scanned a private horizon, seemingly measuring the height and breadth of the untold story. Rhetorically, her question snapped the silence oddly close to the mark of my own mused image. “Or is what I’ve been through enough?”

“Am I to have this written simply so that I can forget and forgive those who tore me out of the majesty of heaven to share an existence where I can be aware of the pain of death and resurrection? Where I can be conscious of the terrible thing I have done to their world mind—so that I can learn how to not look so closely at the horrible truth?” she shared her question in a way I found difficult to take part in. “And yet I am afraid that what I want is as unforgivable as my other sin.”

I shook my head slowly, rising to pour myself a drink. I went ahead and poured her one too, not bothering to ask. It was a small interruption, but enough for me to gather my thoughts. As I sat her drink on the coffee table before her I began to speak quietly.

“I am going to apologize first, and ask you to let me finish before you continue this. Or leave, if I offend you.” She shrugged, then nodded slightly. “Good. First thing. What is the point of all of this?” I asked, since both of our conversations had barely touched on what it was she wanted of me in specific terms.

She stared at me a moment, either unsure of what I meant or how to answer. I don’t know which and she didn’t ask me to clarify. She just reached for her glass and took a sip.

“The story is the only point,” she said after a long silence.

“Then what is all of this you are trying to tell me? Is this the story? Do I write just what you say?” I asked. But there was more to it than this question. There was a more logical problem, as I tried to explain, “There is a tremendous difference between just telling a story and writing a book. There has to be a point of departure. There has to be some kind of common ground. If the point is for people to read this, then they have to be able to understand what it is you are telling them.”

“I am telling you the beginning,” she began, but I cut her off.

“What kind of beginning is saying there really isn’t a beginning. Or, the beginning is somehow not there until the end?”

“But that is the whole point,” she declared, setting down her glass. “I never realized how important that moment was until it was all over. If that moment had not happened, then I would have to describe the whole of creation to explain how what happened could have happened.”

I sighed. “Actually, that has nothing to do with it. A writer can start a story any damn way he pleases. All he needs to accomplish is catch the reader’s attention. It is sort of funny, but in a sense the problem with your beginning is like what you said. People choose not to know a lot of things, like the truth, but in the ways that it counts they can acknowledge it easily. People know that beginnings are illusions. The writer realizes that the reader knows this and contrives to make the beginning slip past the reader. A good beginning suckers the reader into the story before he or she notices it. So the problem with your beginning is that it makes the reader, or the listener, ask too many questions.”

“Is there every anything but at the beginning?” she mused softly, fingers resting lightly on the rim of her drink. Looking up, she flicked her other hand up dismissively. “If it bothers you so much, start at the end. You already know that part.”

I gazed back into her stormy eyes. “You mean this.”

Her response was delivered with a wry grin, “If you like to jump in at the deep end.”

It was hard not to laugh and shake my head. “Didn’t this conversation start with me asking you to ‘Start from the beginning’?” I asked a bit peevishly. She just shrugged and gave a slight nod. “Do you think maybe you took the question a bit too literally?” I suggested.

She frowned, “I’m not that obtuse. I’ll get to my story. There is a lot I am still sorting out and your question got me thinking out loud. I hadn’t considered how I would go about telling my story; it’s hard to see a beginning when I’ve always seemed caught up in the middle of things.

“I suppose you could say that this all began because I dared to look myself in the eye and know myself,” she confided, rising to her feet with her drink in hand. She took a sip as she resumed pacing. “That is how I know the only way to tell my story is to ask you to write it.”

I frowned and crossed my arms. “Something seems to be missing there,” I pointed out.

She nodded, “It is a kind of paradox. I can only assume that you knew what you were doing all along. Either that, or this is all just a dream and the story of my life just the horrible truth of it.” She bowed her head, her hair flowing forward to veil her face.

A cold shock raced down my spine.

“When I set out in search of you, I assumed that the books must have already been written,” she murmured, her words stepping firmly on my mind. “How else could I have read them? I thought they would lead me to you, I thought maybe this is the wrong world entirely. Then I found you, and I finally understood. You are the end of me. You are my only hope of a beginning.”

I blinked and the world shifted on its axis. I did not need to think about what had drawn me to her, and repulsed me. I realized I was dreaming, amazed at myself for believing even for a moment that I had finally met the girl of my dreams and yet truly be awake. I knew in that instant what she had been trying to tell me, what she had already discovered for herself. I knew her story. I had tried a thousand times to write it and found it too painful every time. “It is true. I know how you got here. I didn’t write it. I couldn’t write it. I did not want to do this to you. To me,” I whispered.

“Oh, but you must. If you don’t, I may as well have never existed, and how then can I know my own story?” she demanded, reaching out and taking my arm in her hands. “Do not doubt for an instant how well you know me – how well I know myself. Even as I am undone, I realize that not only will I not turn a blind eye to the truth, you will see the truth in me.”

She was going to force me to see what I always knew was true. She had come to wake me up, and it was going to cost her everything she was. My dream was on its dying breath, and I knew that the girl of my dreams was the girl I had dreamed of being. A girl who chose to face the truth and die instead of living out a lie, and this is where her story begins.

Awakening

I have pointed out before that my struggle with gender dysphoria prompted me to search in all directions for a solution to being born in the wrong body, and the determination with which I pursued that goal in spite of all doubts and discouragements — even attempts to accept things the way they were, adapting to and adopting the identity imposed on me by circumstances — says a lot about me, and even about what I ultimately concluded. My existence may be supported by reality, the physical, chemical, biological and sociological fabric out of which we all seem to be spun, but none of these things are me. I exist in my mind and that is why the way I perceive myself in my own mind can not only contradict my physical form, but trump it in importance to my survival. I have heard the theories and arguments on nature versus nurture and taking my own experience into consideration I can say that there are elements in both that can help shape who you are, but only by presenting the options or stimulus necessary for you to determine who you are. I cannot tell you if this is a process of creation or revelation; it feels like both. I am the driving and defining force within my own mind; my mind is the structure and articulation of my soul.

I was born in a context in which everything and everyone seemed to deny my existence, in accordance with the belief that who I was was based upon what I was and where I came from. I was not encouraged to express myself in ways that were inconsistent with my appearance. I’ve described some of the ways I was discouraged in other writing, and how it affected me. The most important result of this situation was that it did make me conscious of the fact that there was more to me than just my body. I have long since realized that most people are not very clear on what a spirit or a soul really is, but I never really had a problem with that. It was difficult for me to understand the modern view of consciousness and things like mind, spirit and soul as mere epiphenomena. I eventually understood the limitations of scientific thinking responsible for promoting this view, as I understand the way it drives scientists to look for a physical mechanism for the origin of consciousness. On the other hand, I had no difficulty understanding that the mind was central to everything that really mattered about existence. Perhaps that is a result of being hyper-conscious of every thought and action I took as a consequence of being forced to override all of my natural instincts and impulses to conform to people’s expectations of me.

I spent my childhood engaged in a constant, intensive observation of myself and everyone around me. I analyzed the world and all my experiences in it as if my life depended on it, often discovering new ways in which it clearly did. In my day to day life I was as deliberate in the control of my thoughts and emotions as I was in the control of my body. I had to understand as much as possible about how my mind and body worked to achieve that degree of control, which included managing or bypassing a number of “hard wired” behaviors and responses. I was thinking hyper-dimensionally long before I learned that was the way to describe what I was doing, or how to explain the process to someone else. I think the first step in thinking hyper-dimensionally involved the unstated realization that everything in my existence occurred in my mind; the “outside” world distinguished from my “inner” world by my physical perspective in it and limited influence over it. In my “inner” world, I was everyone and everything, everywhere at once — all on the verge of being nowhere, nothing and nobody. My consciousness was an all encompassing point with unconscious depths in the shadow of oblivion.

I began to understand that there are many things you have to figure out for yourself, in order to know and understand them, and consciousness is one of those things. I suspect that the scientific study of consciousness will inevitably conclude that it is a complex form of a basic property of “awareness” inherent in energy as the combined medium of information structured in space, time and mind. It might arrive at that conclusion with more esoteric and granular terms, but that is pretty much what it will amount to. Any other proposition runs into the problem of spontaneous generation of the subjective state phenomenon that is the prerequisite for any observer of the objective state. The consequence of any reductive analysis is an increase in relative potential; which is to say that everything is implicit in nothing. The information potential of a singularity is infinite. The interesting thing is that I am not saying anything new here. The same observations have been made again and again in many different ways. None of them make any sense to people until they observe it for themselves. I have no idea what conclusions a scientifically valid description of it will lead to. The first steps in this direction were taken when science confronted the quantum paradox and the possibility of observer based reality.

For my purposes, this observation is not the end; it is just the beginning. To be perfectly frank, I find myself in an untenable position and this can only be corrected in a world where things we would think of as magical or miraculous can occur. In part, this is because any question of physical transformation runs into problems related to the preservation of the mind. I ran into this while contemplating the use of future nanotechnology to remodel a living body, picking this as the most scientifically plausible method of turning a man into a woman. Biological processes can and should be viewed as proof of the concept of nanotechnology, in which complex organisms are constructed on a molecular level. We know that some aspects of personality can be passed on biologically, but there is no indication that the subjective consciousness is transferable. If you were cloned, the clone would be his or her own person, with a unique subjective consciousness. He might be like you, and assuming your exact brain structure and chemical memory was copied precisely, think he was you, but you would not be him. Nothing we know of suggests that there is any continuity of consciousness in that kind of situation. In a transformational process, there is every chance that the thread of subjective consciousness would be broken as one form was broken down and another built up.

The possibility of transitional death forced me to focus on understanding the nature and survival requirements of the mind, and this is ultimately a question of significance for all of us in the face of the inevitability of death. Death is the inescapable paradox. It is reasonable to assume that it inspired the concepts of spirits and souls. The prospect of oblivion is something that drives us to truly assert ourselves, to dream of and strive for immortality. In our lives we experience oblivion in different ways. In a way, the singularity of our consciousness exists in a bubble of oblivion. It is not hard to argue that individual consciousness can only exist if it is shielded from universal consciousness. Until we actually die, we cannot know if death is the end of consciousness, the end of individuality, or the beginning of something else. All we can do is ask what the existence of the mind really depends on. One possibility is that the body and brain is the foundation on which the mind is built, while the other is that the body and brain are merely the scaffolding used in building a mind that can stand alone. We might as well be asking if the world is really what it appears to be. As it happens, it is not. The world as we know it exists only in our minds.

To be more specific, we exist in our minds and the world we perceive is constructed in our minds based on information provided through our senses. What we can know about the universe is based on the information that can be derived through its structure. Perception is the conversion of structure into information, through the structure itself, into our minds. Our bodies, our physical senses and our brains are part of and can be found in that structure, but our minds cannot. Our minds possess structure, based on they way they use information, however; this gives us information and structure in both abstract and manifest states. The process of transition from a manifest state to an abstract state presents us with one dynamic. The constant transformation of structure in the universe and in the mind gives us another dynamic, in general terms “change” or in more specific resolution “time” which we derive from the continuity of perception. It is possible that consciousness emerges from the organization of awareness in the structures of perception through the interpretation of information derived from static interactions with dynamic structure in the universe. The interesting question, of course, is what does the existence of the universe depend on?

I am not sure anyone claims to know an answer to this question, but science has given us a lot of ideas derived from tested information about the universe. It does not give us an origin for the medium of space-time or energy, but it can tell us that all matter is derived from energy and structure. I am strongly inclined to look at space and time as part of the way energy is structured, viewing dimensionality as a component of structure along with size, scale, position, etc. If, as I suspect, awareness is a property of energy, then even the mind can be fully encompassed in the universe. Mostly, energy seems to be the most persistent and pervasive thing encountered along the spectrum of extrapolation or reduction. I would hope that anyone critical of my inclination to view awareness as an inherent potential of energy will understand that I simply find awareness too fundamental to our experience of existence not to be implicit in energy. I think that the obvious complexity of structure found in the human brain and perceptual processes is evidence enough of the difficulty of focusing potential awareness into coherent consciousness. I do not pretend to have a hypothesis for how the structure and organization works, or where in the process proto-awareness becomes awareness or proto-consciousness becomes consciousness. I just see it intuitively in life in the world around us.

I did not get to this point in my speculation following a straight and direct route, and some of the most interesting and useful things I spent time on were essential to getting me this far, such as a study of dimensionality, part of which I have elaborated on in explaining the different dimensions and part of which I only hinted at in this post — dimensions of mind. It is a lot to go over and again, too much to really explain inside another topic. We do not truly know what energy is, but it does seem to be pervasive and universal enough to be a base medium that, through structure in manifest, static, dynamic and abstract ways would give us space, time and mind, the three media that encompass existence as we know it. Information and structure both have intimate relationships with energy. Our bodies and our minds can easily be seen as structured energy. We are energy and information forged into a truly dynamic state. With all the universe to show us that energy sustains information, it seems absurd to think it would simply delete information like us. Most of all, I would think that energy organized to the point of self-awareness would somehow be self sustaining. If we could become more complex by one dimension of space-time-mind, I suspect that maybe we would. Of course, that’s just me commenting on a mountain of unshared speculation.

Slightly Left of Nowhere

I rarely have time to write or draw, and as my friend keeps reminding me, I’ve little hope making a living as an artist or writer. I have to agree, knowing that even brilliant writing and art takes a massive investment of time and effort up front. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life, however. I have never really had the things I needed to succeed in life. I have almost always had a reasonable substitute for the things I lack, which I am sure could have been used to achieve success, if success meant anything in the absence of a life worth living. The hard, cold facts of life undermine my identity and force me to live the life of a person that does not exist. I succeeded in earning enough to live and function as a man, but the process left me with no sense of myself as a person; nothing that I did felt real to me and nothing that I engaged in felt meaningful.

I tended to find purpose in living for other people, and that worked when I was close to the people I cared about. I did not do that well when I was removed by one degree, living on my own. Alone, I shift from positive distractions as a productive member of a household of family or friends to negative distractions, focusing on work, school, art, writing, reading, and latching on to anything I can do to entertain or amuse myself so I do not dwell on the problems I am not able to solve. I do not go about it in a healthy, productive way. It is more frantic and desperate than anything healthy should be. I get a lot done, but I am never satisfied by my accomplishments, because I know they are not contributing anything to my true well-being. I know I am distracting myself and that I am neglecting many of my real needs, but I keep doing it because I will fall apart if I stop.

Work and school take the bulk of my time and effort, and while one allows me to pay the rent and other costs of living and the other improves my future career prospects, I’m really just treading water as I drift out into the ocean. A degree is a bit of a plus on one’s resume, but it is no guarantee of a good job, and may not offset the negative impact of any transition attempt, and the financial aid debt will drain the financial resources I need to transition successfully. So, even doing all the right things, I am digging myself into a hole I might not be able to climb out of. I have tried to use my need for distraction and love of art and writing together in a positive way, to kindle a creative source of income, but my creative impulses are driven by a need for self expression and I end up putting too much of myself into them. I do not mind that, but I doubt there is a huge audience for transgender themed art or fiction. I have put a few things out on the Internet to test the waters, and while I have gotten some great responses, they have been pretty scarce. Not very confidence building!

I’m a pretty stubborn person, though. I feel pretty fragile because I seem to be bruised inside and out, and that makes everything painful — but it does not really stop me if I accept the pain and push forward. I have mostly been tripped up by indifference. Yeah, okay, I know I’m no one important, and I’m slightly left of nowhere, but it is humbling and humiliating to put myself out here about as naked as I can get, and not even get rude cat calls! Personal feelings aside, though, I realize that I am not catering to anyone’s tastes here. I am just being my self, commenting out loud on topics of random interest between fits of bitching and moaning. I use my blog and various journals as a relief valve, and pretty shamelessly at times. I try to share thoughts of greater interest, and I present only observations and insight — I do not try to present myself as an authority. I am happy if I simply inspire thought, and I would like to get enough feed back to know that I do on occasion. I do not think I would change how I express myself to win over an audience as a professional blogger.

On the other hand, if you have ever been slightly left of nowhere, you are my target audience. If you are a misfit or a dreamer and yet believe there’s a place for you in the world, and that our dreams are worth sharing, you’re my people.

It is where you can, and yet… can you? On writing what I know.

I may have commented on it in passing, and it is something I certainly never miss, but my art and writing have always brought out the real me. In a sense, that is appropriate enough; isn’t it a common recommendation that writers draw from their own experiences? I often feel that my escape into fantasy or science fiction has been good for my sanity, but bad for my hopes of a writing career. I could be wrong. I see enough gender bending in books, manga and film. I find it interesting that most cases involve a boy turned into a girl against his will. Interestingly enough, the first time I picked up an issue of Ranma 1/2, I put it back when I discovered that Ranma considered his ability to become a girl a curse. I did not think I could stomach reading about a guy hated having what I so desperately longed for. Months later, I gave Ranma 1/2 a second chance and eventually came to like him and appreciate what he was going through. I became a fan, read all the manga, watched as much of the anime as I could stand (if you’ve tried, you know why I say that), and even wrote over a million words of fan fiction. I’m still trying to complete volume five; it’s hard to give it my attention when I am struggling to hold myself together and it’s writing that doesn’t pay.

It is not a hugely popular story; people either love it or hate it, it seems. I mostly only hear from the people begging for me to write more, and it bothers me that I usually have no time or energy after coping with work, school and stress. I will say this, it was nice having a set of characters and situations that were so well suited to the topics I always wanted to explore but was always resistant to exploring in my own writing. I wanted to write, and deep down I wanted to share the experiences and insights I’ve had in my life, but I had a hard time with the fact that writing myself into fantasy or science fiction, where the problems I face can be resolved so the character can move on to other things, I was engaging in a degree of self-destructive wish fulfillment. I threw a lot of stories aside because I kept writing myself in and then writing myself into a corner. I tried to get around it a couple of times by jumping past that part, as in The Eve of Paradox, but then I lost the opportunity to show the reader what made the character who she was. I think the only way to break this pattern is to accept that it’s the story I have to write, and hope that it’s a story people will read, love and beg for more–because there is a lot more.

So, there it is. I can say that I chose to write fantasy and science fiction because that’s where you can present a problem like I’ve lived with and get past it. It is a story I’d rather live than write, and I know that has been part of my frustration. I know that there is the option of transitioning, to get close to where I belong, but there will always be a part of me that knows that what I really want would be like magic, a miracle, a true transformation. Even then, there would be part of me hurting for the childhood and life experiences I missed. I have all my dreams, and the problem there is that in all my dreams I was alone. No one in here but me. Perhaps by sharing the dreams and stories I’ve kept silent all these years, it won’t seem like that as much. I dunno, but it’s what I’ve got. Why shouldn’t I make the most of them?

Recapitulation & Reflection

A person looking at my blog might get the impression that I do not get much writing done, and it is true that there are a lot of things in my life that get in the way of me writing most of the things I want to. The inside dope is that much of what I do write, I am not sure I want to share. Does anyone not afflicted with gender dysphoria even care about transgender issues? I honestly do not know. I’ve known people who were sympathetic, curious, interested, confused, upset and even terrified by the topic. It is an uncomfortable topic, and I do not blame people for not wanting to talk about it; and if no one wants to talk about it (except those of us who have to live with it) why would anyone want to read about it? I dunno, but I do have a lot to say about it, and sometimes I do not realize how much until the words start to spill out. Once they do, I begin to find clarity and focus. It helps me to write it, it helps me to come back and read it, and it has a place here in my blog, because it deals with the paradox of my life.

May 04, 2009, 12:04 AM posted to my deviantART journal
When I made the decision to come to Alaska, my family and the handful of friends that know me in my male guise were worried. They were concerned that I would end up alone and cut off from anyone who cared about me. They did not know that I pretty much felt that way already as a consequence of having to live on my own and support myself while stuck in this male body. I had tried to tell them how much it cost me to present as a man, and I had confided that my inability to stay functional made any attempt at maintaining the act over a long period of time a danger to my health. I do what I have to do, but there is a point where I fall apart. If I am lucky, I have a nervous breakdown. If I am not lucky, I attempt to mutilate myself. I’m not proud of that. There is nothing rational about it except in the sense that an animal will chew it’s own leg off to escape a trap. What I’m tempted to cut off, to escape from the trap I find myself in… well, it does not take much thinking to know I would probably bleed to death after cutting it off. That makes it a suicidal impulse to me, but if I had the ten or twenty thousand dollars, I’d happily give it to a surgeon for SRS.

I don’t have the money and I don’t have the stability I need to make that kind of money, and the things I do to cope with this cruel reality only make the prospect of transition less likely. The irony is, I work really hard. I have been going to school and supporting myself for most of the past five years doing IT contracting, office temporary or customer service type jobs. When I have spare time, I try to work on my art and writing–still in the hope of starting a career that allows me to support myself in a less painful manner. In spite of what feels like a heroic effort to make my life better, I continue to hover on the edge of oblivion because I have no time or outlet to be myself. I came to Alaska because I had a friend here who seemed to understand what I was going through, who was going through a little of it himself. We had discussed sharing a place and possible transitioning together, but when I arrived in Alaska, it was painfully obvious that he could not. Gender issues or not, his life revolved around his son and once I was there in person, and not just chatting online, he seemed to have no idea how to relate to me.

So, maybe my family was right, in the sense that I did end up stranded alone in Anchorage. This does not feel like a safe place for me to transition, but even San Francisco did not feel right without a secure job and supportive friends. Now that I find myself between jobs, waiting to hear back from my agency or about the jobs I’ve applied for, all of the stress and anxiety I pushed aside to get through my days at work has come right to the surface. It is staring me in the face and making me wonder if there is anything to hope for. I’ve vented and raged about being transgendered enough times in my journal, my blog, or in random scattered posts, and I don’t expect anyone who bothers to read this to have any real answers for me. I know there are people who care, but I also know no one has the resources to help. I am alone, and if that was going to kill me, it should have done so by now. No, it just makes it harder to quit smoking, or exercise properly to lose those annoying few pounds around my waist, or fall asleep, or wake up, or… whatever.

If I wanted to die, it would be easy. Quitting is easy. Not being able to quit, hard is all I’ve got. It’s stupid, it’s unfair. It’s my life. I have tried to use my creativity to give my life enough purpose to live in spite of not being able to transition. I went back to school hoping that a degree would help me get a job that would allow me to save up for transition. I got a job to support myself while I was on my own and going to school. I ended up with no time for creative work, I spend all my money on rent and bills, and every day I get farther away from transitioning, farther away from hope, farther away from my family and friends, and using every ounce of will and wisdom to keep from losing it altogether. I don’t think anyone should go through something like this alone. Of course, I don’t think anyone who is going though this is in any position to help anyone. People who are not going through this, well, the price for their help has always cost more than I could afford. I have been hurt beyond their comprehension, I need more to heal and recover than I could ever ask for.

I think it would be easier if I wanted to die. The problem with being transgendered is that you want to live and your own body stops you. Instead of living, you lie. When I say I want to die, I really mean that I want to escape from this lie. I would prefer it if there was enough magic or miracles in the world to literally transform my body and make it true to me, and I would consider it merciful if medical professionals fixed problems like this immediately so that the cost is paid by a healthy individual, instead of dropping so much extra weight on someone who is crippled. I wish I could say these things to someone who could actually help me, and I wish I had been able to trust my family when I was young enough that their help would have been enough. Instead, all I can do is fill the silence with the painful realization that the most horrible aspect of being transgendered is that it can force you to isolate yourself.

May 04, 2009, 01:45 am posted to Susan’s Place
My name is Andrea. I am almost 39, M2F transgendered, and it’s killing me. I find myself a little on edge tonight. I would have transitioned in the 80’s if I had believed anyone would have helped me. I have spent the last ten years recovering from the breakdown that resulted from my initial attempt to transition in the late 90’s, and tonight I got blindsided by the airing of three transgender programs on Discovery.

I am severely transgendered, to the point where the pretense of being a man drives me regularly over the edge into a complete nervous breakdown or dangerous flirtation with self mutilation, and, well, that has never been a good thing. I have spent my life destroying myself to appear normal enough to get through the day. I pay for it most nights. Most of all, I pay for it by achieving nothing for all my effort. I’ve literally turned myself inside out to make less than I need to survive, almost every day of my adult life. I’ve gone so far beyond the point where I could have killed myself… that was the day I first read the standards of care.

It broke me but I tried to follow them. By the time I had asked for help, I was too damaged to do what was required to get it. I still don’t understand how I can be too strong to kill myself but too fragile to function on my own. I tried to do better. I sacrificed transition hoping to strengthen my foundation, slowly, painfully, pulling my life more together, living on my own, supporting myself (barely!) while acquiring an Associate’s Degree in Business and pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology for Visual Communications. Unfortunately, my income has been so limited I have not been able to afford therapy, let alone any of the other expenses of transitioning. I’ve been at a stand still. Tonight, I found myself forced to confront the fact that I will not survive much more of this.

I am currently in Anchorage, AK, lured up by a job and the possibility of mutual support (a transgendered person I had become close to online) only to have the job opportunity vanish into thin air and, well, somehow, the support evaporated as well. He is caught up in a child custody conflict and concerned about what would happen if we shared an apartment (with or without transitioning). I was able to find a job and get an apartment, then began temping at higher paying jobs, but because of the instability I’ve been through, chronically, my resume is no asset for finding real jobs. I may have a shot at a job by way of a temp assignment–I’m a solid and talented worker when my brain is not in the process of imploding–but on the off chance that falls through, the only hope I have is that I get another temp assignment right away.

If not. Well…

Things are looking pretty scary right now. But, that’s kind of the story of my life! Trying to transition in 1998-1999 left me homeless and with stitches in something I never should have had in the first place! I have to laugh, though. I kind of have to sigh, too. It took a long time to learn how to say these horrible things so openly and so simply. I used to kill myself trying to make people like me and to make them believe I was happy, healthy and normal. Now, I look at the tragic joke of my life and laugh. I cry a little and then I take a deep breath and keep moving forward because I am not dead yet. I’m scared, alone, afraid I will never escape from the trap I am in, and have no idea what to do if I ever do; but I am not dead yet.

I’m barely surviving… and that’s just not good enough. As strong as I am, this condition is STILL tearing me apart. It’s more than I can handle, and much, much more than my friends and family could handle. Even the ones who would still welcome me on the other side find the reality of where I am now inconceivable.

If only it was….

Anyway, I thought I should do a little screaming before I went over the edge.

May 04, 2009, 09:46 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I managed to keep my head through several hard years of, well, long dark nights of the soul. I have to be honest, a day when I feel merely depressed is a good day. It’s the high point of my emotional scale, sad and disturbing as it is to say. I pull myself together to get through the day, but the toll it takes on me… day after day… I get to a point where I’m too numb to function. I just can’t take it anymore. I’ve been killing myself trying to just get on my feet but no matter how hard I work… the hole I keep trying to climb out of just keeps getting deeper. It is infuriating, and that is much more dangerous than depression. That… I can’t bottle up my fury and outrage at a situation that is insanely unfair.

I do not let myself get angry or upset, because I learned the hard way that it is what causes me to lash out against my body. I do get angry though, because I need stability to earn money to pay for the help I need to become stable enough to earn the kind of money needed to transition. The worst thing of all is knowing that I work so hard every day, and it’s all for nothing. It costs too much to survive.

I have spent ten years working on this problem, and I am tired.

I know there are no simple answers, but I hope that I can hold on long enough to find what I need to escape from this circle of hell. Last night, and tonight, I need to be screaming frantic, here, so I can stop doing it in my head. I need to find a direction to move in that gets me off this slippery slope, lets me take real steps forward.

I am strong, I work hard, I have enough skill at just about anything to be able to make a comfortable living.
I am fragile, and my confidence is so torn to pieces… and I’m so scared of what I want it can be paralyzing…
I hope I find friends and support, I hope I can set myself free!

I hope I still have enough in me to survive surviving this.

May 05, 2009, 08:14 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I do pay attention to the trials other people are going through. My sister lives in constant pain from a back injury, and there was a time when it was too much for her, but she overcame her addiction to pain killers, changed her life, found a job she loves working with animals, and she had been doing very well. Most important, she did the hard part almost entirely on her own.

At the moment, I am focused on finishing school and finding a job I would be able to keep through transition. I had intended to focus on my writing and art, because they are both things I can do very well, but it takes time to get an artistic career going and work and school have left me with little free time. For now, I just work on trying to build up my portfolio, posting work online (I have to check to see if I can post a link to my deviantart, wordpress or fictionpress accounts, for anyone interested in seeing what I’ve done) and scratching away on one of the dozens of stories I’ve started over the years.

The most difficult part of all is worrying that I am physically not a good candidate for hormones or SRS. I am not as concerned about the possibility of not passing as long as I can transition fully. I am concerned that fifteen years of smoking put me at risk of heart disease. It was hard not to smoke when I believed that transitioning was hopelessly beyond my grasp. During those dark days, I did not expect to live long enough for it to matter. I hope I don’t pay too high a price for that lack of faith.

I did look online to see what local support was available, and I plan to follow up in person. At the moment, I have a good reputation with my temp agency, so while I dread the periods without work, I am glad for the work I can get. I am hoping I will get a job I applied for. The interview went well and I believe it is a job that will help me move forward. I guess it was pretty natural to focus on what would happen if things do not work out, and to panic.

I have a long way to go before I am “okay” and I’ve had to deal with all of this pretty much on my own. I am amazed at how much I’ve been able to do on my own, actually, but I know there are parts I cannot deal with alone. I just… got so focused on that “one step at a time” I forgot to look for the kind of help I can get from my trans brothers and sisters.

Now that I am doing something about that, I can take that deep breath and calm down.

May 06, 2009, 07:25 pm posted to Susan’s Place
It is amazing how pessimistic I can get, because at the core I’m a pretty optimistic person. It is because of that inner optimist that I can manage to get through everything. The stuff that drives me crazy is always going to drive me crazy, but most of the time I have a sense of humor about it, or at least a highly refined sense of the absurd! It is the unrelenting nature of this condition that wears me down and pops all my psychic fuses. There are days when good advice makes me scream, when I cannot bear to hear “one step at a time” because I can tell I am stuck on a treadmill, not actually going anywhere. On the other hand, treadmills would not exist if people did not get something out of them. Perhaps I’m just building up the endurance for when I will really need it to get through all the hurdles of transitioning. Who knows?

May 07, 2009, 09:06:35 pm posted to Susan’s Place
Those of us who are transgendered find it very hard to live for ourselves. In most ways, we are like anyone else; we want to be a part of the world around us and be seen and accepted for who we are. Unfortunately, appearance plays a huge part in how people see us, no matter who we are, and that affects the way people relate to us. No one is entirely what they appear to be, and the difference between the person we are inside and the person we appear to be can cause problems for just about anyone. No one gets to choose what they look like, and the person you really are is something you have to discover for yourself. You look at what feels right, natural and normal for you to be and to do, and you identify yourself accordingly. Gender is part of that identity, it is based more on who you are as a person than what you are as an organism. If you’ve ever looked at your picture or reflection, or the things you’ve said or done, and felt that it was not right, or that it was not quite you, you’ve felt a little of what a transgendered person feels every moment of his or her life. A conflict between who you are, your gender, and what you are, your sex, is something you can never really escape from.

The amazing thing about people is that they can choose how to think and act, and control how they react to their feelings, so when a transgendered person–a girl in a boy’s body, for example–is growing up, she starts out thinking and acting in a manner characteristic of most girls. This starts even before she knows what the difference between male and female really is. She has no idea why people tell her to stop doing what comes naturally and act “like a boy” but to make people happy, she does what she is told, even though it is uncomfortable or feels outright wrong to her. No matter how good she gets at being a boy, that feeling of wrongness never goes away, because of course she is acting, not being. I can tell you, from experience, that you can go a long time not being yourself, if there are people you care about that expect this from you. The problem is, you cannot live your entire life trying to be something you are not. It poisons you, it tears you apart, and while you tell yourself to be strong and to “be a man” about it, you are doing more damage to yourself every day.

The consequences are worse the more successful you are in life as a man, because it all comes at the cost of denying who you really are as a person. You will be living and experiencing everything as a man, and in virtually every way, you will be as much as if not more of a man than any man around you. In a lot of ways, that is because the measure of a man is often based on what he does, not who he is. I think that’s a flaw of our whole species, that we tend to value men and women for what they are, what they do, than for who they are. I think that most of societies’ problems can be blamed on the fact that we only value a few people in our lives for who they are. That is what we call love. Unfortunately, our love for people can be tied up with how we perceive them as people. How you see someone plays a huge part in how you hold them in your heart and mind, and because our physical perceptions form the basis of our memories a person’s physical appearance plays a huge part in how we see them.

I always knew I was a girl, but because my body was male and because I was always seen as a boy, the love my family had for me could never be for me. Because of him, they never knew me. I had to pretend to be something I was not in order for them to love me, and I did it, no matter how much it hurt, because I loved them. Unfortunately, the longer I went on denying myself, the harder it became to live for myself. I had no hopes or dreams. I had to give up everything I wanted to be and most of the things I wanted to do to be able to play the part I was trapped in. When I went off to college, and no longer had my family to perform for, I literally fell apart. I did not know how to live. I wanted to just be me, but my body would not let me. All I had to do was relax, and I would slip back to thinking, feeling and acting like a girl, but exhibiting that behavior in a man’s body only made me more conscious of how wrong my body was for me.

The older I get, the more I feel like I will grow old and die without ever having lived. I gave up so much out of love for my family, but when my siblings all moved on, making new lives and starting families of their own, and when my mom got cancer and died, I realized that I was lost without them. I did not have an intimate place in their lives, and I had no life of my own. I spent my whole adult life unable to stay on my feet because the life I had was an act, a lie that no longer served a purpose. I came out to my family, and they pretty much asked me not to change myself, and yet, they all want me to pull myself together and have a happy and successful life. In the end, the cost of their love became impossible. I would have gone on doing this for them, but when they asked me to do it for me they could not understand that what they were asking for would destroy me.

All I ever wanted from my family was to be loved for who I was, no matter what I happened to be.

May 14, 2009, 12:22 am posted to Susan’s Place
I would describe the times when I am “okay” with being male as the times when I am coping well. I never had a problem with being male in the moment, but I cannot bear to be male in every moment. I built my whole male identity around doing, starting with the fact that I presented as male to make people I cared about happy (or to keep them from worrying about me, or worse, thinking I was damaged goods). There are some things I can do where it does not matter what I am, and there are things I do because they have to be done no matter how I feel about it.

There are a lot of things that can blind side me and turn me into a complete, paralyzed wreck. Being around girls can turn me upside down, it only takes a moment to see myself in a girl’s shoes (so to speak) and as soon as I do, I am hit with the reminder of all the things I am denied because I am not female. At other times, being seen as a man by someone, anyone really, can tear me apart, because in that same instant I see myself through their eyes and what I see is not me. The same thing happens when I see my reflection or a photo. It does not matter much where I am or what I am doing, the feeling of not being me hits like a splash of ice water and suddenly I am fighting to assert my own identity in a situation where I really cannot assert myself.

There was a time when I thought of myself as an invisible girl with an autistic brother. I was always me, but no one ever noticed I existed, and I spent all my time protecting and taking care of my brother, keeping the world from noticing that he was not all there. Eventually, I realized he was the one who did not exist and trying to make it seem like he did was destroying me. In spite of that severe dissociation, the realization allowed me to see that the man I pretended to be for so long had always been a part of me, and in a lot of ways, I make a really great guy. I can be him for hours, days, even weeks if I have to, but the moment I stop acting, I am just me, lost, alone and unknown.

Being him gives me something to do to distract myself from the fact that nothing I can do can make up for what I’ve been through or for what I’ve been denied. But, I can only be him when I have the strength to endure reality. I’ll be honest, it is much easier to pretend to be him, and be seen as a really great guy, than to try to be myself through him and be seen as a tragic, twisted and confused freak. I spent too much time learning how to read people, particularly men, to not understand instantly how people see me. I say that only to point out that I would find it easier to stay male, be the man I appear to be, and be thankful for the life I’ve got. It is easy to tell myself I am okay with this, that I’ve grown up and I am better off being the man I spent a life time learning how to be than I would be trying to become a woman who missed out on all the experiences she needed from life.

It sounds logical, but to be that man, I have to cease to be myself. It’s not hard. It’s like holding my breath… um… yeah, not really a good, long term solution. Why does the girl in me keep coming back? Well, she’s telling me to “Breathe, Idiot! Breathe!” You can be anything you want to be, anything you can find in yourself, as long as you don’t deny who you really are.

June 20, 2009, 02:10 pm posted to Susan’s Place
I’ve been having a hard coping of late, and I have begun to wonder if I was ever really coping or if I just got really good at distracting myself. If it was the latter, I guess I distracted myself to the point of exhaustion. For a good while, it helped a lot to find something else constructive to think about or work on, and that would get me through the day. Unfortunately, the nights got harder to get through and I began to dread facing the ticking emotional time bomb waiting for me at the end of the day. I will never kill myself, but I can be self destructive in other ways, like smoking and biting off more than I can chew. I’m used to the nervous breakdowns, but they put me out of work on occasion. That sort of thing makes me too unstable for transition, and only transition will give me enough stability to stop it. So, I do my best to hold on while I figure out what I can do, instead of going crazy about what I can’t. I have to accept the losses and failures that have brought me to this point and forgive myself for making them, or they will forever dominate my life.

June 21, 2009, 01:54 am posted to Susan’s Place
I’ve always felt the need for instant, complete, perfect transformation. Transition is what is available. I would have done anything to be able to complete it successfully right out of high school, but real life and fear and simply not being able to function as a male always got in the way. I would have thought, once it became apparent that I literally lost it so bad trying to be a guy, that I could not hold myself together for more than a few months at a time without a breakdown, I could have gotten some help getting through transition and into a more stable situation before worrying about the costs. I can do it to get through collage, but not to fix the body I live in… go figure! So, yeah, this waiting and waiting for something I won’t have until I finally transition makes me blow a fuse pretty regularly.