The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

We were planning for the washroom and changeroom facilitiesat at the next-year's
prep retreat when a guy at OOC said "I wouldn't worry too much about it;
us trannies are creative."

Did you know that in the summer of 2006, I was at the point of choosing
between two alternatives?

1. Change sex
2. Military service

I think I made the right one.

Not just transgendered people. Our society forces so many people to be bold, and then silences them. Our most ignored are some of our most provocative. The ones we make shy are some of our bravest. The ones we silence are the ones who are the most truthful.



*As I have stated before, the army is a lot safer

CS Lewis and The Great Divorce

I finished it yesterday. We have all these people in the afterlife where hell is a self-imposed stasis in a world where you can wish a house into existence, but no furniture, and it'll let in the rain. If you wanna get out, you have to wait for the bus, which flies up and out, to drop you in a forest where you're a ghost and everything else is solid, solid enough to hurt. The narrator wanders around on the water, which is a bit tricky 'cause it moves, and the grass, which is sharp.

                                        Nice thing about any human relationship for me is that I find it motivating.

It's written well: It's CS fucking Lewis. And it's pleasantly short, which is a rare thing that's getting rarer in the age of the word-processor.

                            I realize that I'm drained by hanging around depressed people.

So we have all these people who are too stubborn to choose to leave hell. They don't like waiting in line. They get into fights, and so on. Upon leaving hell, they spurn offers of help and wander around aimlessly because they won't give up bad habits. Many of them get in a huff over walking on grass that feels like knives, and talk about returning to hell, but few do.

                                        I'd like to eat more ethicially, so I hang around with people who eat ethically.

Now, the advice that spirits are giving them is a kind of smug and obtuse normally found in Kung Fu Masters. No one says. "Look, you're miserable because you're doing this, this and this, and you need to sort through that, and I'll help you in this way, which may seem counter-intuitive, but I'm sure It'll work because I've been where you are and it seemed stupid at the time, but you're the one walking on knives. Oh, and there really is heaven over there, so lets go this way." No one says this. Partially because you're not supposed to want to get into heaven because it's nice, you're supposed to want it because it's G-d. And You should want G-d... because you want G-d. Not the best marketing.

                            Erin has been finding that I'm taking a lot of her energy.

So the bad: This is not a great work of theology*. God seems kind of passive aggressive; setting things up so that He can take credit for the saved, but not the damned.

                                            I wanted to get involved with organzing students and that cute smart chick in my class was looking for people to show up to her student union meetings.

And the good: I find The Great Divorce to be a fine rendition of damnation, but in this life, not the next. We do things that make us miserable, and we keep on doing them. If wanting G-d for G-d's sake seems silly to some or most, then wanting misery for misery's sake is at least 2.38 times sillier. And while being enigmatic while trying to help someone get out of a rut may seem foolish, pretending that there's no problem at all, or at least not mentioning it to the afflicted/afflicting is perverse.

                                Aha, I'm depressed. Better fix that.

Another fine rendition of damnation can be found in Dead Like me, wherein grim reapers are people who died and got hired by the powers that be. Although granted a form of temporary immortality, some of them, after being dead for longer than many people have been alive, are stuck in the same stupid habits that wrecked, or ended, their lives. Others are enjoying the experience. Most, I imagine, do a bit of both.



*("Theology" n. 1. an intellectual endurance contest of making contradictory information fit. e.g. "without faith, you build your house on sand, with faith you build it on rock, with theology, you build it on the back of a giant turtle with sledges pulled by angels that fit fifty to a pinhead").

I had dreams that went all night. Night before last, night I dreampt of Mel Gibson method-acting for braveheart by being drugged and disemboweled. While that was vivid, it was also short-lived. Last night saw drams that I woke up from, and re-entered when I went back to sleep.

A small town in a valley at night. I walk up and down the dirt roads because I saw the recent corpse of a woman aside one of them, but I can't remember which one, so I need to go find it. I drive a mack truck to look, but the toll is $250, so I turn it around. I check along the other direction on foot. I run into Jason and he dissuades me from looking any further.

The people up the road are in a cult, they're the ones who killed her presumably, and Jason is in on it. I evade him and keep looking. There they are. They'-re working out of a camoflauged convenience stor. They see me, and I have to sneak away and get help.

Over the course of the dream, my side and their side struggle back and forth, until we beat them out of the valley, to hold the line at a mini-mall with a dumpster to hide the corpses under piles of meat, and wide bags of shrimp and bean sprouts.

(disjuncture)

After leaving the parking garage, after getting our stuff down the truck-sized staircase at the side that turns out to be rollable and the size of a large CD rack, we head off along the road.

I realize that I realized that we are dead awhile ago, and I tell this to my friends, somewhat to their chagrin. This is the afterlife. Here, most people scream down the highway in mack trucks and busses, but we hitchhike and homestead in a nice patch of green valley, where we argue (amicably?).

I write stories about people who, with hesitation or gusto, call themselves ‘Wardens:’ people who protect people from people.
                                                   My inability to write anything but
                                                         autobiography is an endless source
                                                              of disturbance and amusement.

A while ago, I asked, “what drives you?” I tried to answer.

I protect. I don’t always know how to do it but I try, or at least worry about it. I mean well. Mile-wide parental streak you see.

I just don’t want anyone to get hurt. Ever. I want to wrap the world up in a blanket where it can be warm and cushioned and then I will put it somewhere safe and keep an eye on it.

This is what underlies the frustration. Here are the stable roots. The tree only responds to what’s above the ground. The tree can be cut. The roots will form and has formed shoots, sprout elsewhere

I'm breathing heavily and glad my pack hasn't burst from the bouncing. The bus driver leans over and says, "anyone who runs that far is worthy of a wait."