pride

“You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer” ― L. Frank Baum

why do i get so excited about a million queers coming together to celebrate our diversity and our strength and our pride? 

first of all ... i hate crowds. no, you don't understand, i HATE crowds. i also hate the heat. i hate wandering aimlessly up and down the street. i hate being bumped into. i hate people smoking in the crowds and having to breathe in the smoke. 

so ... why do i love pride weekend? 

we live in toronto, where queer people are somewhat accepted. i am out to my family, friends, colleagues, health care workers, therapist, without issue. i am NOT out to my students. or their parents. because it doesn't feel safe. 

safety. 

i love pride weekend because you can be out and open and express yourself in the safety of the village, surrounded by other queers who get your story, who get your experience. 

“That's one of the things that "queer" can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically.” ― Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

i remember my first queer pride experience. i was 17 and with an amazing group of friends. we were overwhelmed and amazed. we were shocked by so much that we saw. i wasn't out to many people yet, and it was incredible to be surrounded by queers from all over who were welcoming and happy and celebrating. my first introduction to the queer world was happiness. 

“What I love about being queer is... Everything. I like that it makes me different, and I like that it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. I like that it makes people ask me lots of questions about things they probably would not normally ask people about their relationships or lifestyles. And most of all I love being queer because i get to have a girlfriend.” ― Tegan Quin

over the years, i have done things like walk topless down yonge street with glitter on my breasts, spend hours in the beer garden at the 519 community centre sitting and talking with friends, people watching, walking up and down the street aimlessly for hours, sitting on the street watching people walk by and guessing their stories. 

and the one thing that remains the same is the feeling of community. the feeling of belonging. 

this year, i am missing the pride festivities because i have a choir performance. i have been pissed off about it for months. but as i was thinking about it this morning, i came to realize that my big gay choir is my big gay family - including the annoying cousins, the rude aunts, the creepy uncles, and the dearest hearts. 

so this year, i am not "missing" pride, i am spending it singing with my big queer family on a big gay stage being annoyed, being happy, being out, being proud, being strong, being silly, being irritated, being mad, being giddy, being excited, and being human. 

happy pride!

be kind to yourself, 
xoxo

“Are you queer? she said.Me? Yea, I'm queer as a coot.You dont look it.Is that right? You know a lot of queers?You dont act it I guess I should say.Well darlin what would you know about it?I dont know.Say it again.What?Say it again. I dont know.I dont know.That's good. You need to practice that. It sounds good on you.” ― Cormac McCarthy

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Pokey Sue's Plant Predicament

dear blog readers ...

today was a day of treatments, and lemons. it began with acupuncture and ended with a head massage and with a cranial sacral treatment. 

when i was with pokey sue, lying on her treatment table, she began telling me about her lemon tree that she bought on friday. she wanted to grow lemons so that she could make lemonade. well, it turned out to be a bit of a figurative lemon. she has had it for 6 days and it is already dying. 

i became instantly both intrigued and obsessed with the possible solutions of how to keep her lemon tree alive. pokey sue suggested that we need to work on bringing ME back to life, and not her lemon tree. but i became fascinated with the idea of trying to grow a miniature citrus tree in the winter in toronto. the idea of trying to nurture something that in the grand scheme of things belongs somewhere else. 

i became instantly wrapped up in the idea of nurturing this plant back to life. what could we do? other plants had died in the apartment, so the first thing that had to happen was a cleansing. obviously. then checking on the temperature and whether it was too hot, too dry, or if there was a draft. and then it was time for more drastic measures. the first thing i advised pokey sue to do was to go out and buy some lemons to put near the tree. for inspiration, of course. i then advised her to talk to the tree, and to play mozart for it. 

i think in my zest for livening up the life of the lemon plant, i may have suggested finding a psychic who communicates with plants. perhaps that could explain why the leaves were curling  ... yes ... i got very involved in the life of the lemons. 

now here is something interesting ... it was proven that plants have similar reactions to lie detectors that humans do. Cleve Backster, attached electrodes to plants in 1966 in order to measure the rate at which water reached the leaves. what he claims to have discovered that plants have a stress response. he tried burning a leaf and measured changes in the plant. he claimed that plants have empathy and emotions. his findings were never accepted by the "scientific community" because he did not follow the scientific method. however, it is an interesting idea - that plants can have emotional responses measurable with a polygraph machine. (check out this article) 

when i got home from my appointment, i got to work immediately, researching how to grow a lemon plant inside in ontario in the winter. i learned that she might be over-watering her tree, or she could have pests, or there could be a draft. 

right now, pokey sue's plant is a flower. and if she uses a paintbrush to pollinate, the tree could grow a lemon.

it made me think about myself. and how i am trying to make myself be something that maybe i am not ready to be. i am trying to be "better" to be "recovered" to be "healthy and happy." it made me think that i am like the citrus plant, brought inside for the winter. i am meant to blossom, but i can't force it to happen. maybe the conditions aren't right. maybe my leaves are curling. and in any case, i can't grow a lemon because i am not a lemon tree. but i can focus all my energy on saving pokey sue's plant and solving her plant predicament. 

i asked a friend to tell me about lemons ... and she shared a story. i can't steal it or quote it, so i have to introduce her as a guest blogger. this is CP and this is her story about lemons ...

i took a psychology class in university. i loved my prof. on the second day she brought a big bin of lemons and moved the desks out of order...like in a circle so, the goal was to pick a lemon and study it we each got our own well, i picked my lemon.she wanted us to study it. we had to memorize everything about it. did it have a funny dent, something about the tip? etc eventually, we were supposed to pick our lemon out of the whole class of lemons(it was a rather large class, 20 plus) so we started in a group of 4 people. we had to pick our lemon out of 4 that was easy. and so on, i think we passed the lemons around. no one in that room believed they would pick their lemon. we were all like, huh, right. so.. at the end we ended up all with our own lemons. she wanted us to take a couple things away from it:

1. something might seem impossible at the start, but it can be accomplished

2. believing in our own abilities I loved that, while lemons all seem to be the same, i picked one that was mine and i followed it to the end

3. we can follow through to the end!

anyway, i kept my lemon, we got to decorate them and mine sat on my desk in that vase with sage and some other trinkets from really hard things that i have done to remind myself that i can conquer things that most things can relate to the concept of going on a Journey at the beginning you are like, "yes, i am awesome, because I am doing THIS"then you reach a low where you are like, 'fuuuck, what did i get myself into"then there is another spike, where you are really like "woooo... i am on top of the world!!! i am so amazing for doing this"which leads to an even lower plummet: "oh my god, i am so stupid, why did i think i can do this. i fucking hate everything. nothing is cool, everything sucks"...then there is like a numb bit, where you just go in to automatic.where eventually, you find yourself coming out the other side and you feel a sense of pride and duty to self determination..anyway, apparently, i got all of that out of a lemon.xoxoxoxox

CP's story also made me think about myself. everything in life is a journey. and you can't skip ahead to the next summit (right KM?), you have to keep climbing the mountain no matter how steep. 

xoxo
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