Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

By lunchtime I was thinking: it feels like I'm getting a migraine...and the massive sudden change in weather would back that up...but... I can't have a migraine! I just had one on Friday!

Yeah that's not how it works. I do feel like it's "not my turn yet," though. Hmph.

And yet here I am to tell you that my favorite musician is being threatened by the administrator of the country he and I are both from, for what Springsteen said in the city where I am now.

I refuse to read any more about this but D, who sent me this link, has been updating me since on it. The Boss keeps saying the government of his country is a threat to life and liberty every night on stage and Trump keeps insulting him on Truth Social: apparently now his skin is like a wrinkly prune.

Today D told me that Springsteen and the E Street Band have released an EP of what Bruce said and a few relevant songs from that first gig outside the U.S.

I listened to (most of) it while I was trying to work this afternoon. I'm just so delighted that it was in Manchester, which prides itself on being a city of rebellious and momentous music. (If only the gig had been at the Free Trade Hall instead of Coop Live! but it still makes me think of Bob Dylan and the Sex Pistols...)

I listened to the introduction, some of the lines I'd read about, and then the song and it struck me that "Land of Hope and Dreams" is a song closely connected to Clarence Clemons's death. It couldn't be as good a song as it without stemming from a profound lifelong love that Springsteen talks so movingly about in his autobiography and in Springsteen on Broadway, and that love existed between a Black man and a white man, about whom a Springsteen biographer said "They were these two guys who imagined that if they acted free, then other people would understand better that it was possible to be free."

I thought about the intense and unashamed love between these two men -- a pinnacle of what platonic love between men can be like -- and how annoying that is gonna be to the people who've suddenly realized that Springsteen is "political."

And the song has taken on this whole new life, which I'm glad of even if I'd rather The Big Man got to live a longer life.

I listened to the intro for the other song, I was trying to eat my lunch and I ended up with my eyes closed, unable to do more than listen and breathe. And after talking for a few minutes, he quotes James Baldwin -- "There isn't as much humanity in the world as I'd like. But there's enough" -- and then says "Let's pray." And for some reason, the next track didn't start. And that was the end of that one. So I just sat there, over my bowl of leftovers, imagining this happening a few miles down the road and a few days ago, I felt like I was there.

But suspended in this weird silence that went on for a long time before I realized that something technological had gone wrong.

I read all about his Catholic childhood in his autobiography and recognized a lot of it myself, but neither of us have retained it. Silent prayer isn't his style. Going right in to the next song is. And that's what he did.

I applied for a job and I talked to my parents this evening. And I watched the Twins lose a heartbreaker (all credit to Jackson Chourio though, wow).

Can't believe my reward for this is that I have to go to bed soon so I can go to work in the morning!

According to this, and a new book I maybe have to read now, a gay pioneer in the UK was blind.

In 1960, seven years before the law in the UK changed to permit sex between men, he had written to the national press declaring himself to be gay. Roger believed that the only way to change public opinion about homosexuals was for them to take control of the gay rights movement – and this required them to unashamedly identify themselves on the national stage. But nobody else had been willing to do it.

It's because of his blindness that this person had to come in to his life: an Oxford student, also gay, who could be trusted to read his papers and write and generally be a kind of personal assistant.

To gay when it was illegal, and then to be blind, required a lot of access intimacy when everything was still on paper.

The article ends:

In the years since, it has often led me to wonder how many other quiet revolutionaries live among us, ready to share their stories, if only we knock on their doors.

So many. I'm sure of it.

It's ME Awareness Day, and my train is running 39 minutes late last I heard, so I took the opportunity to finally read this piece in a tab I've had open so long I cannot remember where it came from. It's a really incredible read about chronic illness and narratives as necessary for access to care, and what hearing from ill people does to those in a position to offer care.

( long quotes, from a much longer article )

I talked to my parents last night (a Friday instead of a Sunday since they've got plans this weekend).

My dad mentioned the new pope. My parents both said approvingly that he's "pretty progressive, pretty similar to Francis." Which was a big change after the previous 24 hours of social media being all shitposts and "uh guys did you know this guy sucks and actually the catholic church is problematic, can't believe no one has mentioned this yet."

My dad mentioned something the new guy has said, I just got a garbled version from my dad but I think it was something about him saying it's not his place to judge humans that God has created to be gay. Regardless of the accuracy or veracity of that, it was something my parents were repeating approvingly, which feels like a very big deal to me.

On the topic of same-sex marriages, my dad said "I see these pictures of people and...they just look so happy. If they want to get a piece of paper, fine!"

"And it isn't hurting anyone else!" my mom chimed in. It's true! (In a few weeks my parents' mixed-sex marriage will have existed for fifty-three years. Unbothered by the existence of gay marriage for like the last 15 or whatever of those years.)

Then my mom said "And those homosexual..." but she kinda swallowed the word like she was thinking wait, that's not the right one, then she said "lesbian" in a way I thought might be about disgust but I later realized was more "trying to carefully say a new foreign word" but then she still struggled to get her sentence out and then my dad had sufficient context clues to say "Do you mean trans gender?" And again it was definitely a new word, with a big space between the two parts like it was foreign (reminded me of those people who hyphenated "bi-sexual" for such a long time) and I had time for just a moment of oh, here we go... dread before they went on to say something I can't remember word-for-word but basically, they're being told trans women are too manly to play sports but also not manly enough to serve in the military, and they're not having it.

Even my parents can see that transphobia doesn't have any internal logic.

It was a stressful call for other reasons, and I had a huge headache by the time it was done, but I hung on to my dad saying "They just look so happy" about queer couples getting married. It warmed my heart. As did the fact that, even not knowing the words for trans people, they know that you can't decide they're whatever gender allows them to be punished the most.

Telling the others about this afterward, I mentioned that I remembered, by chance, being at my parents' when the Obergefell ruling came down legalizing marriage across the U.S. and watching TV news with my dad, with some of those photos of beaming newly-married couples. I remember my dad saying something similar then (I know I wrote about it here, but search doesn't seem to be working for me right now sadly), about how happy the people looked.

D sent me a link to a song, "City Hall" by Vienna Tang saying it's his "favorite 'queer people being happy about getting married' song." I wasn't familiar with it, but just reading the lyrics gave me goosebumps.

Ten years waiting for this moment of fate
When we say the words and sign our names
If they take it away again someday
This beautiful thing won't change

The annotation on that Genius link for those last two lines says

Those who were married at the City Hall in 2004 knew that their right to do so remained in jeopardy– and unfortunately, it was in fact taken away; in August of the same year, the state courts ruled against the city and voided all licenses it had issued to same-sex couples.

I remember those times, I remember people driving sometimes across the country, people who'd been together for decades sometimes. People lining up at night to be ready when a city or state or federal law was about to come into force. The eagerness and the desperation. And all the businesses and volunteers that gave them food, drinks, treats, people wanting to do whatever they could to support this, to celebrate, to whatever limited extent felt possible.

It feels so long ago now and it really wasn't. And I remember the first time Trump was elected hearing Lib Dem friends, who treated U.S. politics like a series they were binging, blithely talk about Obergefell being overturned. Nothing can be taken for granted.

But it's still there. And my mom is saying it isn't taking anything away from anyone else. The world really has moved on. I have hope.

Our paper/cardboard recycling didn't get emptied two weeks ago.

Nowhere around here did.

A day or two later I saw on Facebook that a nearby neighbor had asked about it and been told to leave their bin out, it'd be emptied that night or the next morning. The bin lorry had broken down.

So we all left our bins out.

They did not get emptied.

Often, paper has been our most overfull, in-demand bin in the first place so it's a pretty unlucky one to lose. But this fortnight, it hadn't been too bad. But when the little recycling bin we have in our kitchen, the one we empty in to the big bin outside when it gets full, was overflowing to the point of annoying and stressing me out, I took it out to the driveway and shoved the existing cardboard and paper down to such an extent I could fit all the new stuff in.

And I did it once again a few days later. I don't know if we just used less cardboard in that fortnight or if it's all my muscles from going to the gym.

But I felt so accomplished for this.

It's ridiculous how good I felt about fitting four weeks of cardboard and paper into what is not a very big bin.

And tomorrow we're back to the regular day the bin should be emptied! Fingers crossed it all works out.

21 MPs sign motion in support of trans rights to mark start of Trans+ History Week

Here's to good trans futures. And trans presents, for that matter.

With bank holidays and various other shenanigans, there's hardly any trans gym at all this month.

So this morning, a pal and I took matters into our own hands: we went to the local gym.

This led to me yesterday looking at how expensive the gym sessions are, considering I can have a discounted monthly membership as a crip, and -- after much app inaccessibility! -- signing up to that. To get the discount I need to use the name on my disability documents. So it's still not a deadname, but a crip name.

It's the gym I used to go to when I lived across the road from it, but I haven't been since before covid so some things are different: I used to have a membership card with a bar code to scan and now I have to use the goddam app for everything, now I am much more confident in what exercises to do and how to do them.

It was still intimidating, and it was good to have a buddy there -- they're autistic and were also apprehensive, but we helped overcome each other's barriers and we were both very happy to have the company.

Another guy was really helpful when I couldn't adjust a bench to what I needed, called me "bro" or "mate" or something a couple of times which I thought was really nice. Something else that hasn't was the way young men congregate around the weights and machines, it's one reason I never used to go near them. But I had to today, and I had way better form than the guy doing bicep curls next to me like he was in a movie, heh. Everyone goes so fast! And they let the weights clank so loud every time (which is not just annoying but makes the exercise less effective)!

This gym has the same brand of dumbbells as the place we have lift club, and the weights are matte black with the numbers on them in shiny black. I can hardly see them at the best of times; I rely heavily on them being neatly organized at trans gym. Which of course they were not here with a bunch of young guys. So I'm glad I had someone to spot the dumbbells I needed (and they were even next to each other!).

I've now found the machines that do the exercises I am used to, so that feels good. I'm mostly used to adjusting the machines now (the leg press very noisily! oops). And I've learned a little warmup routine from my pal, who's done some work privately with our trans gym trainer, which relieves another big source of stress: I do a lot better when I have some structure.

It was a mentally tiring morning as much as physically tiring! But good. And it should be easier the next time I go back.

Tonight I met someone whose visa has just been approved and who started T today.

What a good day.

I was so excited to meet another trans immigrant.

Today was such a stressful day at work. By 3:30 I was frantically doing as little of it as I could get away with in hopes that I can be functional by the time I have counseling after work.

I was expecting to do a social thing after that, which I had been looking forward to but by this point vacilated on from one second to the next. I could equally easy make the "ignore your bad brain and do the potentially overwhelming thing!" argument and the "listen to your brain and body and stay home" argument. Both felt plausible. Neither felt more likely to be correct than the other. I hate it when my anxiety and depression gang up on me like this, leaving it feeling impossible to make a good choice.

I spent all of counseling talking about feeling isolated and not having roots or a sense of belonging... And then I was like "oh I don't know if I can make myself go to this local queer event's first birthday, which I'm so lucky to have in my neighborhood and where I've met so many nice people..."

Even knowing it's exactly the thing I need, it was so difficult to get myself out of the house.

I rode my bike there, which was a great decision, really enjoyed that. The weather was beautiful even at 7:30 (ckear skies, just starting to come down from the day's high of 77°F), and it was a quick familiar ride.

I didn't feel good at the event and left about halfway through.

Came home (smooth and quick on the bike!) and had a beer with D in the garden as the sun went down, the bats came out, and we admired the tiny crescent moon. A nice end to a long day.