one word.
January 2, 2009
i have been wanting to write more here yet am seemingly stuck in a non-verbal phase. i have been eschewing the phone these days because it takes up too much of time. my words. my voice. i am remiss in responding to many friends (and colleagues) emails because my fingers tire quickly when succumbing to orthographic conventions. already it is the second month in the new year, 3 months since i last dropped words here…and i am still gasping for air.
it is synchronicity that catches my attention these days…and as a way back into language, i choose to examine the signs before me. i am noticing movement beginning to inspire change underneath a frigid surface, stagnant from fear, anger and inexperience. i am noticing this movement in the many ways that a single word promises hope and brings forth a sign: “yes” slips out of my mouth as i stand up for myself, across my hands as i caress the promise of my art, and through my eyes as i smile at her.
this “yes”, this single word, is crashing through walls – the fortress even — that i have built around me to ward off the “no” i have convinced myself others are slinging at me. slowly, i take steps towards me, towards them, towards her, towards you…and waiting with bated breath to discover what will be revealed as the walls come tumbling down.
today.
i am paying attention.
following signs.
breathing.
.yes.
language returns. one word at a time.
one word.
January 2, 2009
i have been wanting to write more here yet am seemingly stuck in a non-verbal phase. i have been eschewing the phone these days because it takes up too much of time. my words. my voice. i am remiss in responding to many friends (and colleagues) emails because my fingers tire quickly when succumbing to orthographic conventions. already it is the second month in the new year, 3 months since i last dropped words here…and i am still gasping for air.
it is synchronicity that catches my attention these days…and as a way back into language, i choose to examine the signs before me. i am noticing movement beginning to inspire change underneath a frigid surface, stagnant from fear, anger and inexperience. i am noticing this movement in the many ways that a single word promises hope and brings forth a sign: “yes” slips out of my mouth as i stand up for myself, across my hands as i caress the promise of my art, and through my eyes as i smile at her.
this “yes”, this single word, is crashing through walls – the fortress even — that i have built around me to ward off the “no” i have convinced myself others are slinging at me. slowly, i take steps towards me, towards them, towards her, towards you…and waiting with bated breath to discover what will be revealed as the walls come tumbling down.
today.
i am paying attention.
following signs.
breathing.
.yes.
language returns. one word at a time.
blocked in
November 6, 2008
i want to write. je veux ecrire…soit en francais soit en englais. je veux que les mots tombent de mes levres…mais ils ne m’arrivent guere…je veux ecrire quand meme. i just want to write. i am filled with words, ideas, stories — i know they are there, but where and how to start?
i want to talk about possibility, about (re)connection, about trusting patience. i want to talk about metaphors and motorcycles and the equal space i give to riding and sex in my life. i want to talk about politics and my deepening reserve of tentative hope. i want to talk about healing. about joy. about her.
i really want to talk about her. this boy who rocked my soul, cracked open my heart…and from whom, at that time, in my resurgent grief, i stumbled messily away, et que maintenant elle est de nouveau la, en face de moi.
i want to write about how i humbly employed the words “i’m sorry” twice today – in two very different conversations – with two very different people. i want to consider the power of these two words to build connection, hope and respect…and yet, if used while skirting sincerity, they are words that can do more harm than good.
i want to talk about signs, semiotics and the synchronicity that ties them all together.
i want to talk more about memory and meaning and the invisible spider webs of dreams.
i want to talk about revolution. i want to talk about change.
above all. i want to talk about wanting, about asking for what i want and getting what i want. and how i am learning that these two may look nothing at all alike.
picking pronouns
October 2, 2008
i’m spending now 5 days in one of my chosen communities – with folks who organize around class, privilege and wealth – to move money and power t0 support community-led efforts for sustainable and radical social change. each year we gather at a conference to build with each other at the intersections of race, gender, class, ability and sexual orientation. as young individuals who come from privileged class backgrounds, we are intentionally taking the space to look at ourselves, our actions, our inactions — and explore, in a cross class, multiracial space with other activists across the country, what it will take from all of us to achieve a more just economic system and a more equitable redistribution of wealth.
in this space, we also make the effort to respect each others identities and experiences – especially it seems, around sexuality and gender – as queerness is becoming more and more the norm in these gatherings. curious – but true. for the past three years now, we have made it common practice to start all of our spaces with the following two questions:
1. what is your name?
2. what is your preferred gender pronoun?
and i realize, how this is actually the only space i inhabit that consistently asks for recognition for preferred gender expression through pronoun use. even in my shifting narratives group, a collective of queer/trans artists, we, only very recently in a meeting, were hit the realization that we have never actually asked ourselves in the group, what each of us prefer.
this is striking me today because it raises the question about assumptions. when we make them. when we don’t. and beyond that, what do those assumptions entail? i stated my name and preferred gender pronoun three times today – in a group of folks who i know extremely well…and yet, each time, i stumbled. because in asking me to state what i prefer, means that i have to consider what i prefer…which admittedly, is something i don’t do that often.
and what i prefer is actually no pronoun at all…and yet, i spit out “she” as my preference. each time i say it, it just feels not quite right. like i’m telling a lie that is mostly true but…not quite. but i don’t know how to answer this question that reveals this nuance.
you see, i don’t like pronouns. i think they can presume gender and identity in ways that are not always true. or fully accurate. and pronouns do not offer the flexibility of fluidity that gender can express. i was humored today by a good friend’s response to the question that involved a long diatribe about “ze ” vs. “he”… paired with a current flirting with the use of “squee” and “squir” — and it got me really thinking more about how much i really don’t like gender specific pronouns…and how limited language is as a tool to define who we are as complex beings in a rather simple world.
i really don’t mind “she”, but i don’t think that “she”, in relation to me, is fully accurate. it’s not wrong, by any stretch of the imagination — it’s just not completely right. limiting my gender identity to a single pronoun feels incredibly reductive and dismissive of the actual experience of gender that i carry behind it.
in a sleepy stupor, i am struggling tonight about this because i so appreciate the importance of instituting a community practice of respecting folks gender identities through chosen pronouns — and yet, this question feels inadequate and incomplete…and ultimately though, does it matter that my gender identity – in its fluidity and genderqueerness — be actually fully understood in that precise moment i respond:
“i’m syd. or stephanie. i go by both. and “she” is fine.”
what do you mean?
September 26, 2008
battling jetlag and the side-effects of benadryl, i am curled up on my couch and wondering about how we perceive meaning through language. a friend is across the room, fiercely editing my latest film, while texting here and there with a new sweetie. as we strategize responses while trying to suss out lascivious innuendos, i am thinking a lot about how we communicate, or not, through snippets of the written word.
we assume in sending a text, writing an email, or even speaking face to face, that what we mean is transfered through the words we use, the phrases we choose, the tones we embrace. and yet. usually, the person on the other end can only perceive how they would mean it because no one gets the pleasure (or punishment) of living inside our heads. it’s like editing a film, i’m being reminded – because i know the story, i get told that i can be way too subtle — and am constantly reminded that i need to find the balance between clarity, simplicity and hitting someone over the head with the message. having someone else edit my work, for the first time, is teaching me this.
i think i am being clear with someone when i say “you’re amazing”, or “i miss you”, or “i love you”, or even the simple “thank you.” i assume that the person i’m talking to understands the depth of the feeling behind those words, the importance i ascribe to it.
i’ve been thinking a lot this past week about how i broke up with someone last year – how the words i composed in a final letter to her were supposed to be received (as loving and sweet) — yet, her response was simply, “i have nothing positive to say to you…so i’m just not going to say anything more”…which she didn’t until almost a year later.
i’ve been thinking about what i am wanting from the other person when i do communicate. what did i want from her? what do i want from others now – as i pass along a text, an email, a hug when we meet? what are the underlying motivations driving me when reaching out to someone else – as i attempt to pass on meaning through words? is what i’m saying true? necessary? and kind?
can there be communication without expectation? is it possible to express oneself in a way that doesn’t somewhere, somehow seek out approval or affirmation of some sort or more maliciously, hope to wound or silence? i am sure that i am overlooking other motivations of language – and i wonder now if communication can ever be neutral.
the “he said/she said” — or even “he didn’t say/she didn’t say” — game is a vicious circle i can spin in often. i want clarity and truth in my connections with others but i am curious to know if those are perhaps more elusive dreams than can be achieved through language alone.
this is definitely not a new topic to invade my brain but it is curious today that where i am going with it, is to a place of memory that rocks the absurd. i remember three conversations in which meaning that was ascribed to what was said, or was happening, traveled such a circuitous path that i was left angered and confused.
curious, too, that all three of these moments involved interactions with my mother.
moment #1: i’m on the phone with my mom, it’s my freshman year at college and in my head, i’m failing my classes — meaning, i was getting B’s…so i am upset, stressed and worried, and in that moment, i was crying and saying how scared i was about failing. so she responds: “you’re clearly upset about something, stephanie. are you pregnant?”
moment #2: it is the summer right after i graduated from ucla and was packing up my stuff to head off to new orleans for grad school – where i was continuing my studies in french literature and film theory. my mom makes the comment: “so i know how impressionable you are and since you insist on studying feminist literature, are you a lesbian?”
and my favorite. moment #3. i must have been in college and i’m at my parent’s house, sitting in the dining room for some reason….and i’ll admit i am not someone who fastidiously (or ever) makes a regular practice of cutting and filing my nails which irritates my mom. so she says to me this day, “your thumb nail is too long. do you do drugs?”
in those moments, i was just confused – trying to understand how things i was saying could be perceived in such incongruous ways — and yet, running my fingers through the viscosity of the memories today, i realize, my mother was just communicating her greatest fears about me: that i would get pregnant before getting married, that i was queer and that i did drugs.
well. 2 out of 3 were true…though not at all for the reasons she ascribed.
