@valomile / valomile.tumblr.com
i’m very wary of the idea of “avoiding other people’s negativity”
if by “people’s negativity” you mean their projecting or attempting to transfer their own suffering onto others, or constant catastrophizing, then yeah, that’s usually best avoided
but if when you say that you avoid other people’s negativity you mean their normal expressions of grief, anger, and fear, or narratives of their own suffering, then what you’re doing is avoiding their full humanity, and likely your own as well
the last captain’s log ended up being a harbour for my trauma therapy homework, and at the same time, i’ve also been swamped with other work, so this is one of the last body farms that made it on to paper. it’s a favourite of mine.
I’m having a funeral for something that hasn’t ended yet I have a funeral every day for gifts I do not yet know how to hold when will I learn to let them live?
I’m leaving the light on just in case I get lost again I’m always leaving the light on just in case it’s not over when will I learn that it will go out?
I’m just saying hello because until now I couldn’t name you I’m saying hello this morning because you’d eat my heart just to be seen when will I learn that some things never stop?
I’m ripping the seams and growing too fast for my skin I’m ripping the seams as we speak and breaking the vacuum seal when will I learn that something is always starting?
I’m killing my double so I can wear my own face I’m killing my double tonight so it can’t steal my body when will I learn that it was me all this time?
oh so i’m a “gatekeeper” just because i own this gate and won’t open it unless you bribe me or solve my riddles three?
I dried my guts in salt and pine needles yet I can still feel their pull I ask them a question: are you still here?
I lost my mind yesterday in how it happened before one hundred events seen as a never ending pattern
I buried my heart in out in the yard and now I’m coming back for it I’m digging for water that was always there
the highest praise you can get is two rats fighting over one of your bones
Me listening to a thunderstorm: this honestly goes off
moss is just natural carpet that grows over everything and that’s so sexy
Three days ago, I kissed all of K’s lipstick off. It was matte black, the kind that dries on. It crumbled in our open mouths and flecks of it slipped down our chins. She bit me, as she kept saying she would, on my lip and I think something in me jumped a little.
I observed the squelching sounds of our lips mushing together for a while before breaking away--at that point I was kissing her chin more than anything, I think. Looking back, I also think I struggled with not knowing what to do with my hand that wasn’t occupied with grabbing her hair and pulling her close, so it just kind of hovered beside me.
All this happened in her car, parked in the driveway of my mom’s house. My lips were burning after.
When I told this story to Elizabeth, she said, “kissing is like an oral history, because it’s like you’re passing on your previous kisses.” I’m a little bit skeptical. She continued: “you learn something every time and I think you reflect some of that the next time around.”
I wonder what history I even have to pass on, or what history I have recieved; all I remember from kissing before this is that it made my lips wet.
I believe that I am solely responsible for making sure bad things don’t happen.
Evidence for this belief:
Evidence against this belief:
when janelle monae finished telling me about how everything is sex except sex (which is power) and hit me with that “now ask yourself who’s screwing you” for the first time, i ascended far beyond this plane and met with the deity that rules this universe before coming back into my body a fully enlightened being
michel foucault was bald because janelle monae spoke these lyrics to him through a rift in spacetime and immolated his wig
“Cis men are evil,” “cis men are predators,” and “cis men will hurt me” are things people said in trauma group today. The adding of “cis” before the men statements started with our spiky dog-collared non-binary group member; others started doing the same either as a supportive gesture or, at least, to seem supportive (who can tell?).
The thing is, I know the men the group is talking about. I also know the men they are not talking about: the shitty trans men, who are, inadvertently, being excluded--the trans men who aren’t infallible because of their transness, who act in the same ways some cis men do.
I wonder if they would still make these men statements if I looked like a man. Would “cis” be replaced by “some” if they didn’t know I was trans? Would they withhold those statements altogether? I could be one of those men for all they know.
So when people separate cis and trans men unnecessarily, it sure does feel like they don’t really see me as a man, or a man who can do wrong in the ways they’re talking about, whether or not they are aware that they’re making a distinction at all. Some of them probably don’t want to make me feel different, and it still puts me in this weird place of belonging and not belonging all the same: adding “cis” was likely a supportive nod to me, and yet it still feels--and to some degree is--othering.
Me, marching all alone at the capital with a single sign that say “ROT IS GOOD”: remarry death and agriculture!! remarry death and agriculture!!
Three more aesthetic experiences:
I noticed in the back of the car in the Wendy’s drive-through that you can see the reflections of the drivers in front of you--each car mirror a cameo of a blank faced driver, each a floating head receding into space.
Yesterday K and I saw something bound across the road, some distance from the car. It was the same colour as the road extending behind it so all we could see was the movement. It was a coyote, the first one I’ve ever seen.
One night I saw a rabbit sitting up like a tiny furry obelisk on the sidewalk in front of me. As I approached it, some trick of the street light made it look like its light coloured paws were hands with delicate little wrists illuminated in the ochre glow.
Three aesthetic experiences:
I was walking home from St. Joe’s when I encountered a parked truck that creeped me out. Its headlights, far away, looked reptilian: metallic, with little black slits in the center of each light. The eyes had the quality a person wearing sunglasses has: looking everywhere and right at you all at once, blankly. I had the sensation that this creature was regarding me with little interest as it bathed in the hot sun.
While having one of our little parking lot talks in her little red car, L and I saw a big bird fly overhead. I craned my neck to watch it glide above the sunroof.
“That’s a turkey vulture,” L said.
“I love you!” I said at the bird.
“You’re awesome!” L added as it flew out of sight, her arm extended out the car window to flick her cigarette.
Yesterday, before planting the summer tomatoes, I dug up the bones I buried in the frozen ground in November. They had been completely, silently picked clean. I brought one of the yellow bones to my nose and it smelled like the earth.
