who only by moving can balance

These are the steps of the morning: get out of bed. Daylight bulb. Teeth. Shower. Dress. Select jewelry; select perfume. (Try to remember, to summon energy, to brush my hair.) Breakfast. Pills. Is everything in my pockets? Is everything in my bag? Do I need a coat?

-- it's not that simple. It's never that simple. Sometimes "get out of bed" gets broken down into minute steps. "Shower" is almost always smaller than that: pyjamas? dressing gown? towel? bathroom. remove clothes. hang towel on rail. stand staring blankly into space. eventually remember how to step into the shower. eventually summon motive force to do it. is my hair up? do I know where my shower cap is? should it be on my head? did I actually remember my towel? fuck. hot water: hot water helps. now what? choose shower gel. spiky or warm? was it cold outside? did I get daylight when I opened my eyes? rinse. turn off water. try to remember how to get out of shower. wrap self in towel. stand staring blankly into space.

Some days, I can run through on autopilot. Some days, every motion is a choice (and every choice is hard). This is what living with executive dysfunction, exacerbated by depression, is like.

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I still find it unsettling to realise how hugging myself in the bathroom, lost and all forlorn, somehow strings moment into moment into being, into brightness and beauty and confidence. I curl myself around these rituals; I draw strength from them; and I am building myself a life.

I find it hard to spend time with people I don't know well; I find it hard to get to know people; I find it hard to trust. This is the source of a great deal of on-going soul-searching and the beneficiary, I suppose one could say, of a great deal of my time and money.

There's one obvious exception to this, and that's poetry.

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(Content notes: tattoos, self-injury, surgery.)

Catalogued for the sake of writing them down, with twofold purpose thereto.

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SO YES. There's a thing. (Brought to you by idly contemplating getting through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered/I have fought my way here/for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great/you have no power over me as scrawl over a shoulderblade.)

This week poetree is curating a series of guest posts around the general theme of intimacy. I've written a personal exploration of the poem How To Make Love To A Trans Person [content notes: poem is explicit; meta contains extended discussion of surgery].

• the Discworld ConCom (seriously these people are AMAZING - like I e-mailed them last night to be all "thank you for having Mx as a default title! you're amazing! it made my day! who do I talk to about getting Msc added?" and by 8am had a "that's a trivial fix, I'll do it when I get home from work :-)" response) ♥_♥
  
• my useless lovely ex -- ♥ to you, Chris
  
• CODEINE
  
• my lovely, lovely housemates, who do not flap at me when I slide gracelessly from my washing-up-stool to the floor, but merely ask what I need, get it for me rapidly and without fuss, and then let me get on with it
  
• randomling, who has tonight held my hand through getting to grips with git, such that I will shortly be submitting HAVE JUST SUBMITTED my first DW patch since we migrated (thank you SO MUCH, sweetie ♥)
  
• making a difference to communities I'm involved with -- in this instance, identifying bugs and filing them and documenting things I've done where existing documentation doesn't cover questions I had (and got answered); and adding more stuff to Things Real Dreamwidth Programmers Do while I was at it; and vaginapagina, of course, and all the stuff I've done with that today
  
• HYPERBOLE AND A HALF WHICH JUST UPDATED AND IS GOING TO UPDATE AGAIN TOMORROW HOLY SHIT
  
• using my words and having it go okay
  
• all of my fantastic friends. seriously, you guys are so great, I cannot even
  
• being in a position to be all DO YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT I WANT RIDICULOUSLY HOMOSEXUAL HIPSTER CLOTHES and, um, I am so sorry, I now own ridiculously homosexual hipster clothes i'm not sorry at all BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH: starting to put together how I want to look, as part of who I want to be, and (1) not feeling bad or superficial or shallow for wanting to feel comfortable and at ease in my body and (2) being in a position, financially, to act on that

life. sometimes it's pretty good. I am much, much more okay than I was, and I'm not sure why, but there we go, I'm not knocking it. ♥ (Actually, I suspect some of it is that an awful lot was swilling around in my head and it desperately wanted out? And then I a poem and I felt better, so.)

I can't even remember how I first came across it - on a trans-activist flyer, somewhere, probably, several years ago - and I've been using it as my default icon pretty much everywhere more-or-less ever since.

And I thought: yes yes yes. Because: I'm trans, but I twitch at the binarism, the male-or-female, the these-are-your-choices of the traditional gender symbols; I don't think of "male" and "female" as fixed endpoints encompassing the entire range of an immutable gender spectrum so much as culturally-legible reference points. Yes, this sounds wanky, but bear with me --

-- because part of what I love so much about this image is that, for me, it says all that, but it says it wryly, with raised eyebrows, in the full knowledge that it's taking the concept of gender and spinning abstract theories off it like so much spider silk -- and it grounds it: gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail/learn how to use my hands/not just my head, I'll think myself into jail/now I know a refuge never grows/from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose/gotta tend the earth if you want a rose...

I always carry a penknife in my pocket. My wheelchair bag contains tyre levers, a mini bike pump, hex keys in imperial and metric, and a spare inner. I'm a blue-skies academic, but I'm also a geologist: I know where my hammer is, and I know how to use it. Gender isn't just an interesting thought experiment for me: I get my hands dirty, I make mistakes, I find bits I forgot about that are badly in need of props.

About ten months ago (wow, is that all?), enemyofperfect told me that the artist is Luka Delaney, via one of synecdochic's celebrate Monday posts. And then I was sad, because the way Luka captions this image is:

I am very offended that the existing symbol for transgenderism only includes three groups (Male, Female and Intersex). I feel that, for a group that has suffered as much oppression as the Transgender Rights Movement, they could be a LITTLE more inclusive of those of us who don't fit into the Trinary.

To that effect, I have designed a new model for the Transgenderism logo. As you can see, mine includes several new categories for gender identifications that have previously been ignored. I believe these additions will prove quite handy for the Movement in general.

-- but: I'm going to keep using it, because (flippantly) the author is dead, or more practically because: this icon is recognisable as me, now, and my meanings are layered on top of those Luka imparts to it. You can see through, in places, to be sure; but I am going to take this image that spoke to me, and I am going to make it part of myself. Turning mockery and cruelty into love is hard and unforgiving work, but that, at least, is nothing new.

(Still from finch's list of 21 questions.)

Because I was choosing new names for myself.

Because German is my first language.

Because I sing.

Because "Kabarett" carries specific connotations of cabaret as a form of political satire.

Because goodness knows I'm plenty political.

Because I'm entirely too fond of anagrams and multilingual jokes.

Because it's perfect.

---

I've a post that will be going up on the LashBlog sometime soonish, about names and "reality". And it boils down to this: all of my names are chosen, and all of my names are real. kaberett is as much my name as the one on my prescription pre-payment certificate; my life online is as real as my life offline, and separating the two is an... interesting task, and I wish you luck with it.

The big tattoo I want to get is white ink: bricks (yes, as per The Wall) up my back, turning into jigsaw pieces at my sides and around onto my chest (which part will have to wait until post-surgery).

I'm building myself (back) up; I'm putting myself (back) together. I'm not ever going to be done, of course, but that's part of the joy of it.

specifically, there's a lot of "give me your current age so I don't ask you to time-travel", but actually... I'd like to time-travel, and it will be genuinely good for me to envisage two separate (positive!) scenarios. If you're interested in answers for past ages, then ask & I'll reply in comments.

I picked 25 fairly arbitrarily as a quarter century; I'm a little surprised - mostly pleasantly - by how close that is these days. :-)

I lived in:

Now: a ground-floor bedsit room in college accommodation, next to the Botanic Gardens, with huge south-facing sash bay windows. My room contains a sofa and a desk and a sink and a bed and a fair number of bookshelves and a coffee table covered in my tea collection, and I'm next to a kitchen that contains fridges and a freezer and horrible electric hobs and a nice-enough-but-not-lovely electric oven and a microwave. The front door's up 6 steps, and the shower's on the first floor; the back garden contains purple and white crocuses and narcissi.

At 25 (i): A two-bed flat in South Kensington, in London, shared with a friend, with level access (be it by lift or not). We've got a kitchen with gas hobs and an oven and a fridge and a freezer that we're not sharing with 8 other students, so it isn't full of gross months-out-of-date raw chicken; we've got a sofa that doesn't try to eat people, and a media set-up a bit more satisfactory than craning over people's shoulders to stare at laptop screens, so we can watch shows together without being uncomfortable. The tea collection's got somewhere sensible to live, and we've got a shelf in the living room dedicated to storing the shared perfume collection. The bathroom's big enough to store my shower stool in without getting in the way, and in my bedroom I've a double bed and a view of a tree. We go to the Science Museum Lates, and I spend lunchtimes in parks or visiting another gallery in the Natural History Museum.

At 25 (ii): I live in my home town, and here I can afford to share a house - rather than a flat - with friends. We're on a bus route or two, and I'm within easy pushing distance of my mum and the Various Other People I want to see regularly. The best bit? I get to do whatever I damn well like with the garden, within reason, so we've got herbs and bulbs in tubs, and a bay tree, and roses and wisteria up the back wall.

I drove:

Now: Nope: I'm officially Too Crippy To Drive, in ways that are highly unlikely to change, and positively-imagined futures don't erase that. This doesn't mean I'm upset about it, or the prospect of not being able to drive; it just means that my life's rather better when I'm not desperately hoping for the impossible or, at the least, improbable.

At 25: See above.

I was in a relationship with:

Now: Some Boys and a Girl and some extremely intense, close friendships built around poetry and music, and a few other ill-defined things, and it's lovely.

At 25: I've got no idea, but I'm looking forward to finding out. :-)

I feared:

Now: A depressive relapse. Not doing well enough this year to take up the PhD place I've been offered (which is not necessarily a sensible thing to fear; see scenario (ii), which is plausible and lovely, just different!). Everyone I love or care for dying. Being shouted at. Hurting people. Coming out. Moving somewhere more than a phonecall and fifteen minutes from my mum. London buses.

At 25 (i): Hurting people. Another depressive relapse. Breaking the mass spec. Hydrofluoric acid. Presenting at conferences. Disappointing Julie. Not doing enough activism. Being authentically myself in an academic setting.

At 25 (ii): Hurting people and another depressive relapse; they don't quite go without saying. Navigating meetings with Equalities ministers. Getting things hurtfully wrong. Not being able to help as much as I want to.

I worked at:

Now: My final year of a degree in Earth Sciences, specialising in volcanology. My student union's LGBT+ campaign. Lashings. VagPag. (Dreamwidth.)

At 25 (i): The second year of my PhD in isotope geochemistry, spending endless hours in the clean lab in the basement running columns, and even more time doing the three a.m. I'm-the-only-person-in-the-building dance around the mass spectrometer. My university's LGBT+ campaign. Lashings. The Big Sibling Project. Dreamwidth. VagPag.

At 25 (ii): The Big Sibling Project, including organising regular workshops. Lashings. National campaigning for trans* equality. Collecting a book of my essays for publication, self-pub or zine or maybe traditional publishing houses. Counselling - I'm beginning to be let loose on actual clients, which is daunting and exhilarating. Dreamwidth. Copy-editing, to bring in a bit extra. VagPag.

I wanted to be:

Now: Trustworthy. Safe. Welcoming. Brave.

At 25: Probably still the above, but I'll defer to my future self on that one. :-)

I have, as mentioned, acquired a perfume habit.

There's a lot of reasons for this: one is the looming deadline and exam term, though that's clearly not the whole story, because I've also acquired an Indigo Girls habit.

But... it's not, actually, just about procrastination. It's about a lot of things.

It's about giving myself another reason to get out of bed, and to wash, and to get dressed. It's about sensory reassurance: about carrying something with me, throughout the day, that is familiar and comforting and evocative; through which I can close my eyes and be on empty moors, or by a fire, or in an old and dusty library, or in the dappled shade of trees, or walking across fresh-tilled fields in autumn.

It's also - and this isn't as paradoxical as it might appear - about grounding myself in my body, and about claiming it as my own. I've talked before about dysphoria - about how confused I am by the existence of some parts of my body, and about how alien they feel - and I've been talking a lot, recently, about other people's projections onto my body: about assessments and assumptions, about rewriting my self to fit their worlds. (There is a poem about this; I've been thinking about it a lot, too.) Scent marking - I am here; I was here; this is mine - has a long and, uh, illustrious history among mammals; I don't think what I'm doing here is really much different. A familiar scent gives me something to come home to; and it tells other people that this is mine, that I actively claim it.

So it also feeds in to taking up space: reminding myself that it's okay to speak without first apologising; that it's permitted to square my shoulders and occupy centre stage, rather than folding in on myself in a corner lest I get in the way (and trodden underfoot; and so on). This does, obviously, have its drawbacks: I need to think very carefully about the fact that I'm allergic to many common scent compounds, and to remember that just because a scent is fine for me doesn't mean it will be for everyone I interact with. This goes both ways: it reminds me to be respectful and compassionate towards others and myself.

And it changes my self-perception, or is possible because my self-perception is changing: because one of the threads running through my life at the moment - thanks be to the Fates - is, yes, reclamation. Reclamation of my body. Reclamation of my gender. Reclamation of space: to inhabit, in both literal and metaphorical terms. I am thinking a lot about the spaces available to us in terms of masculinities, femininities and androgynities - there's an essay in the works on the topic - and perfumes seem to me to be an excellent field in which to start.

Some people have expressed surprise when I've mentioned perfume: but perfume's feminine, they say, floral, not very... you. Is it?

If the assumptions were true, the premise would hold. But... they're not.

One of the things that surprises me, over and over again, is that the houses I'm buying from don't, by and large, gender: yes, where they mention it it's binary, but they take great care to say "for men and women", rather than "this is a MANLY MAN MAN MAN MAN MALE scent" and "~this is delicate and floral for the laydeez~". And the BPAL forums, similarly: people might say they consider a scent masculine or feminine, but you'll have different people saying both, and "neutral", for every scent reviewed. In person and online, people are willing to experiment: "this wasn't good on me, but was delicious on my SO," or vice versa. In the world of perfume I'm occupying, oppositional sexism seems to be well and truly dead: gender categories aren't rigidly defined as opposites, and movement between them is not only permitted but encouraged.

This is the work I want to do - to make it possible for people to make those journeys. And, for the first time outside explicitly social justice-conscious spaces - for the first time, in a space that's dominated by cis het people - I've come across somewhere that does that, automatically, without thinking.

in the land outside this social scene/the streets are filled with the gender police, say Jesus and His Judgmental Father - and it lifts my heart to find another social scene where that is not true.

And that is why I have fallen so hard for this hobby.