I often joke, if Cherokee's bored, there's something wrong. Today started being a wrong day when I woke up at 5 am. There was my lover, leaving me again in just a few short hours, again. I knew I'd miss her. Our weekend had been so short. They always are. I live in my apartment, she in hers, and I had been so unprepared this year, kind of overwhelmed with the October 1st beginning of the annual Holiday Whirligig, red and green moving in fast, beginning with our half-assed, 5th anniversary, which I failed to step up for and celebrate properly, too freaked out by my relative lack of funds, though I did spend some money. I can't believe I forgot to get her a loving card and sign it "With All the Love I'll Ever Have, Your Hubby."
Oh, there's a back-story, always is. Yeah, I'm gay. We have that in common. But "hubby?" Where did that come from? Backstory, etc. I love her calling me that. I'd be an out and out cross-dressing dyke, but even though I'm only being myself and this is just about who I love, really, even though all I want is peace and brotherhood among men, (and among women, of course, but I stick to the English generic "he" as it is established, long-standing and clear), people tend to hate me if I wear a tie and keep short hair. It's really not that big of a deal, even though I was so homophobic that 24 years ago, (no, I'm not even wrinkly yet, just 40 + X), I felt suicidal and very confused. Since then? Not confused a bit, but not without enduring some dislike and even out-and-out hate. I'm even in what's supposed to be a liberal part of the country.
I once painted a random face while experimenting with my paints to mollify the boredom thing, probably about 10 years ago, and (she came out latina!?) I just accidentally began to express myself from the non-verbal part of my mind, usually only an artist's privilege. I decided to divide her face, because even though I'm just another cracker-with-native-blood and a slug who can't work due to multiple disabilities (yes, I'll tell the slug story sometime, if I remember), I was HER and she was me. She resembled me only in spirit, a spirit-form and vision of myself. I gave her the realities of my self and my life, right on her face. I gave her a tiny whisp of gray, though I wasn't graying yet. Like I said, this was my spirit-self. I gave her sad, large brown eyes and pale, soft pink lips. I gave her my high cheekbones. I gave her the war-paint of the Amazon woman-warrior, as interpreted by some silent, painting part of my brain. I darkened this half a few shades to a negro color, filled with the primitive paints used by the native African before he was plundered and debased by greedy white men. I too bear that shame, and I am no racist. My father is, but we never talk. Maybe it would do him good to live down in Southern parts of our great country with liberty and freedom for all - Except liberty and freedom to exist as who you were born to be.
Her warpaint was for self-defense only; hers was a war to exist as who (other side of her face) she truly was and the person she longed to be. This side got a rainbow, and peace and unity symbols. I felt like that, because when I "came out" the whole world changed. I'd been a cute young woman, used to gentle treatment by almost everybody, and I returned the same. Suddenly I was openly hated, sometimes afraid for my safety. I didn't even have a girlfriend yet. I just, well, changed. I couldn't help it. I was finally free only to find a new form of bondage. Technically, I'm not even totally gay, I'm bisexual with a preference for women.
When I displayed this painting, it was misinterpreted, even by the gay community, though I think I can understand why now. I felt that the world was suddenly at war with me, and I was forced to watch my back, expect less civility, less acceptance - hello, homophobia.
We just hit a population of 7 billion for the world, and there's a plentiful supply of American children. One of these American children is even mine, though grown now, she was the only sunshine in my life for the long years of a short marriage. I thought he loved me, and yes, I loved him. Sex? Yes, plenty, and it was good, always good with him. I just came to a critical mass and I couldn't carry on without a long-overdue phase of my maturity coming to haunt me.
He overworked, hardly seemed to know what to do with any of the tender emotions, I was alone all of the time, mentally ill, narcoleptic and miserable in a foreign part of the country, isolated, barely able to carry on at all except for the overwhelming need to love, feed, bathe, nurse, dress and teach my only child, who I would have sold my soul for, who WAS the embodiment of soul enough for us both, my only joy.
Let's just leave this part as it is. All true, but nearing a disastrous tell-all. Strange, we don't talk about the things that really matter. We also tend to reject those things we don't understand. Can you understand?
I mean no harm, I represent no threat to family or any other values, and to no other persons. I just happen to be of the approximately 10% of our society who are something a little short of straight, no matter their intellectual desires, their upbringing, even if they hate themselves. Some think it's genetic, lots of religious folk who claim they love their God hate their gays; ESPECIALLY them, and to rock the boat further, what they use to justify their very un-love-like behavior is being badly misinterpreted according to the best Biblical scholars. And doesn't every country have its own religions, usually with some ancient text accepted among themselves as holy? Whose book is right? Whose interpretation? Wars have been fought over religion for millenia. Would Christ want blood shed over those who resisted his teachings of love? That's what Christ truly tried to teach, yet so many have no love for one who loves. Look what they did to HIM.
I was once immersed and made native to a deeply conservative, fundamenalist religion, but I grew, I learned, I worked, and the more I learned, the more the case made itself abundantly clear that I could no longer agree with what was once fed to me and which I gobbled readily, because their book and their doctrines and actions were in some bizarre state of unquestioned chaos of self-disagreement. To this I had quite a frightened confusion, like a dreamer half-awake, and waking in a different place than he had fallen asleep. I was not even aware of my sexuality at that time, since I had never considered the matter at all. I simply woke in a different place, got my bearings and began a conscious search for all those wonderful things like God, truth and love, with interesting results still coming in. My search is not for the destination anymore. The search IS the destination.
I am aware that many consider Einstein atheist, but he was actually strongly against atheism. He believed that a great Cosmic Being ran the laws of the Universe. Being who he was, he created his own category of belief style, as I did before I ever learned of Einstein's views. I too am considered extremely gifted by some, now a "hopeful agnostic theist," but while I may (and have, according to some) qualify as one in a thousand, Einstein was one in untold millions. He was an agnostic theist who marvelled at his Cosmic Being, his title for one who defies naming and keeps the planets spinning. Who am I to argue with Albert Einstein?
Perhaps, always the jokester, as well as the spell-seeker, he created this name for his beliefs as a litle joke on himself, as "agnostic theist" could very well be considered an oxymoron, and also the self-description of a man in awe, a man in battle with himself in that he finally found something he thought he believed yet couldn't prove, something he could not deny possibility of nor prove existence of, as his only argument FOR was a sort of an a priori and his argument against was impossible. He cast his vote as FOR. So do I these days, but I think He/God/Cosmic Being transcends any single religion or school of thought. I once wrote a poem titled, "The Quantum God." Now, remember that He created me.
He has answered my prayers in stunning ways, too stunning to ignore; not the constant prayers of the lonely, church-bound, studious, teenage girl but the sparing, struggling prayers of a soul often in pain and need. I now pray that you no longer hate me, if you did before you heard me. You HAVE heard me, know that.
I've traded my war-paint for long hair I keep in a braid in the custom of my favorite, most-compatible bloodline. My great-great Grandfather Ray was full Cherokee. I can't prove anything now, but I can cerainly FEEL. That 1/16th more and more outweighs the rest, all the usual European immigrant-salad that makes up most of us.
Now, wasn't I just complaining of boredom? I still miss her, but I'm not bored anymore, and I've found a certain peace, and to think it started with war. Perhaps war of some form is the ultimate pre-requisite for peace, because what is peace, if not another name for balance, for freedom? I am free now. My spirit-self soars.
Soar with me and love that certain one whom you couldn't love before. We are only who we are.
While you soar, consider: are you soaring as a parrot? Much better the thinker, though the colorful singer is sweeter. Are you a starling, an heron, a sparrow, a raven, a dove, an eagle, or perhaps a falcon? To inject a bit of my own self-laughter, sometimes my spirit-self tells me that perhaps I and all others who would soar are really just pteridactyls with a few feathers and a little paint.
We all deserve to love and be loved, because without love, there is no hope, and without hope, there is no rational reason to continue to exist.
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