Tag: celesteh

Old Men

The sort of charm of pipes and shaving kits and things made of leather.
The charm of men who drink Jenever
and fought in the war.

They are old men.
Our fathers or grandfathers.
Charming with their tweed and antique handguns and easy masculinity.

They wish they spoke like Hemingway,
so they chop their feelings instead of their sentences,
show their affection by talking about your car.

“You dress like an old man,” my last girlfriend said about my hat.
I want to skip straight to old, missing awkward and gawky and this second puberty.
I envy them their beards,
their unquestioned assumptions,
their bodies which, at least once, matched
before they needed doctors to make things work.
We have that much in common.

Crap Poetry

The hospice volunteer read from a book of poems about death.

It contained rainbows.
And also wolves, bald eagles, spotted owls, blue whales,
a veritable who’s who of the endangered species list.
All of them welcoming a freed spirit

Maybe they didn’t know my mom had let her membership to Greenpeace lapse.
Or maybe they did, but also that when that quack came around saying shark cartilage was a magic cure,
I’d said no.
Not just because it wouldn’t work
but for the sharks

Or maybe, as the poem implied, they were just overjoyed at the death of a human.
Any human.
Thinking, “Thank gods. If enough of them die, we might get to live after all.”

Six Years

Six years ago today, I went to the opera to see Messiaen’s St Francis of Assisi, because it was the last night and I had a ticket and all the critics were raving about it.
Some people might think that I’m too willing to sacrifice them for the sake of music. My mother died alone because I was at the opera. And if I’ll do that, what could anybody else matter in comparison?
We buried mom with some things of hers. My dad tried to give them to the mortician ahead of time. But he said to bring them back later.
We had a rosary at the funeral home. Her casket was in the room. We said ten Hail Marys and went home.
My dad had in his hands some things of hers to put with her. So the mortician opened up the casket in the front of the room, so Dad could put them in.
My dad who wanted a closed casket. My dad who had to call somebody to take her body away the morning after she went.
He put in there her teddy bear that she’d held for the last few weeks and her volunteer badge for the historical museum and a few other things. I forget what.
One of my mother’s friends saw the lid lifted and approached. Wanting to view the corpse. My mom had wished for a closed casket funeral. So her friend was disappointed. Palpably so.
But it didn’t matter because none of it could actually possible be happening.
This is not how she would want to be remembered. This isn’t the story she would want me to tell. It’s what’s on my mind, crowding out other memories.

Write Letters

Dear Senator Feinstein,

I am writing to ask that congress investigate whether the president has violated Posse Comitatus. I’ve just read, in the Army Times, that an infantry brigade has been deployed domestically on a permanent mission. This would seem to be in direct violation of H.R. 4986, Section 1068, signed into law on 28 January 2008, which restored the Posse Comitatus to it’s original wording. I believe strongly that the army should not be used domestically and that the president should obey the law. I hope that congress will take action on this issue.

The Army Times article is here: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

Thank you for your time,
Céleste Hutchins

Posse Comitatus was a law passed in 1878 which prohibited using the Army for domestic law enforcement. There’s a lot of reasons that this is a good idea. Police Officers, for all their short comings, are employed by the area that they police and are subject to review by several layers of government. The National Guard is under the control of the governor of their home state and generally only deployed in emergencies. They are under review by the national government in addition to the state government. And really, they only ever should be mobilized during emergencies.
Police Officers, ideally, are trained in doing police work. Recently, they’ve been toying with becoming a military force, but their job is supposed to be public safety, which means that they use force only as a last resort and use non-lethal force whenever possible. The army’s job is to kill people. They are trained to be an occupying force. In the army, to “pacify” a situation means to kill everybody who is upset about it. People who have been doing a lot of killing overseas are not really the best folks to do police work at home or anywhere. Furthermore, the army’s chain of command goes up to the Commander in Chief. George Bush. They are loyal to the president.
Deploying the Army domestically is a violation of an important law. This is a blatantly illegal act. Their mission is contrary to our democracy. Action must be taken.

Nationalize, Not Bailout

With 700 billion dollars at hand at any time, Wall Street’s party isn’t over, it’s just getting started.
There’s a plan afoot to take our tax dollars and give them away to huge companies that have made poor choices. We buy off their bad assets, sell them at a huge loss and then sit around waiting for them to have more bad assets. It’s a $700 BILLION pool of money, that never goes dry. We can’t have national health care, because that’s too expensive, but any hedge fund in trouble can have cash when they need it.
We infuse huge amounts of tax dollars, what will turn out out be trillions, over time, and in the end, have nothing. The uber-rich, however, have a huge safety net. They can make no wrong choice. If they bet on prices going up, and they go up, big win for them. If they bet on prices going up, and they go down, our taxes make up the difference. It’s a hell of a party when you don’t have to pay for it.
The idea is that some businesses are too big to fail and too important to our economy and therefore, it’s in our shared, public interest to help them out. And this could well be true. Large banks are an essential part of any modern, market economy and having tax payer backup for them is an important tool. But if we’re paying for them, we should own them. Companies that are so important to our well-being that they need public support, should belong to the public. If they’re central to the government’s mission, they should be part of the government. If we pay when they lose, we should profit when they profit. Things like health insurance, banks, and public utilities are too important to be run like a card game. If we need them, then the people in charge should be answerable to the public who relies on them, not on shareholders who place bets as if it’s poker.
Companies that are not vital to our interests, but so big that they can’t fail are too big. Break them up! Don’t just hand over our money. This is class warfare. they want to squeeze every drop of cash out of the middle class and the poor and use it to buy themselves third, fourth and fifth houses, while leaving the federal government to foreclose on our sole homes. Don’t forget that these “bad assets” are our homes! Professional bankers and mortgage brokers advised private individuals to take poor risks. These professionals committed fraud. They lied to us. They lied to their superiors, who were only too happy to look the other way. A whole lot of deception went into this mess. Nobody in the banking industry was shocked when their loans starting going bad. They knew they had been making bad loans. They also knew they still got to keep the huge bonuses that they paid themselves. And they knew they could count on tax payers to bail them out. The same tax payers who are now also facing foreclosure and are suffering generally under the credit crunch.
The people who made this mess should be the ones to pay for it. The rich made money off of this. Tax them! They can spare it. Tax the war profiteering corporations who have been making billions off of our tax dollars by not rebuilding Iraq. Tax the oil companies. Tax the profiteers!
I think safety nets are an entirely reasonable part of an economy. But they should be there for people who need them. If I get sick and get laid off, I lose my house. If we can afford to help out robber barons, we can certainly afford to help out people who are having a rough time. How many people could get healthcare for $700 billion? How many kids could go to college? How many unemployed people could have an extra month of breathing room while they look for a job in a crap economy?

We’re in the credit crunch because of fraud, certainly. But we’re also here because of deregulation. Regulations are there to prevent things like this. They need to be re-instated. Our houses, our jobs, our economy are not playthings for speculation. Banks and insurance companies need to be kept separate. Our currency is not a toy for speculators. Our manufacturing sector hasn’t gone offshore because of the magical free hand of the marketplace, it’s gone offshore because of changes in tax laws. We have the power to control how we allocate our money, who gets and how resources are managed. We could re-instate the tariffs that used to protect our manufacturing sector and thus create jobs and reduce the carbon footprint of global shipping. We could start enforcing the laws that are supposed to protect unions and make safer, better workplaces. We could stop government outsourcing, so that people who provide public services are loyal to the public and when disaster strikes, we’re not at the mercy of private firms, Blackwater and mercenaries. The government could actually govern! It could provide services. It could stabilize the economy. It could use our resources to help us, not the rich friends of corrupt officials. Things do not have to be like this.
The bailout is the wrong answer. If we have to save a company, we should own it. Nationalize, not bailout!

More navel gazing

For a while now, I’ve secretly wished not to have any emotions at all. (It was a very secret wish: even I was not informed.) I want to run around doing exciting things, but I want to dispassionately observe them at a distance. I want to watch myself on the telly. I want to be a perpetual tourist in my own life. I want an off switch on my emotion chip like the silly Star Trek android, Data.
On the other hand, I’ve been feeling more or less depressed recently, which I hadn’t felt for a quite a while . . . and I have had virtually no anxiety. Are my choices anxiety or mild depression? It’s much nicer to be sad for no reason than to be panicked for no reason.
I don’t have data, but I suspect that it’s very difficult to write music while striving to not feel anything. Which may also explain why it’s been so hard.
Why try not to feel? Well, it often kind of sucks. A few years ago, when I used to sometimes get depressed or stressed or whatever, I had a feeling like I was at the bottom of a long shaft, like a smokestack of an abandoned factory. And on my shoulders, there was a flat, large board that fit perfectly inside the shaft, like the floor of an elevator car. I was holding it on my shoulders to keep from getting crushed while more and more things got dropped on to it. But this image is no longer current.
Now, I feel like a bag of parts. Like a cloth sack wrapped around something porcelain, that got smashed in shipping. I feel broken. But mending. Like Frankenstein’s monster, the parts re-assembled, slightly misjoined, ringed by scars. Still in the midst of loose bits, nothing in quite the right place. Misshapen, ugly, absorbed in myself.
I want to go out and live and make mistakes and recover from them and have excitement, novelty, adventure, etc, but not feel it. I want pain without hurting.
Sophie says that I clearly hate myself. I want her to be wrong.

Long time no blog

I haven’t been posting much lately. Things are not going all that great and I don’t really want to talk about it. I blogged a bunch when I got divorced about love and relationships and blah blah blah. It was a big learning experience of navel gazing wisdom. What I’ve learned lately is that I suck at relationships. And that testosterone seems to cause belly button lint.
I’m trying to pull myself together, so I’m going to a shrink next week. And I’m going to Rome next weekend, on a whim and an invitation from a stranger. Yeah, so I’m nuts and also somewhat extravagant.
When I was getting divorced, I discovered that was poorly individuated. I’m still really fuzzy around the edges. I need to be ok with being alone. I feel a little Peter Pan-ish. I appear to be about 19. I’ve never really been by myself. I’m perpetually a student . . .. I don’t know what it means to be an adult, but it’s time I got on with it.
At the same time as I’m having angst, I’m settling into London’s queer scene which is large and friendly. I am not settling into the music scene as quickly, nor am I writing much. I understand it can be problematic to block out one’s woes in bars, especially if one isn’t getting much work done. But it’s better than sitting home by myself having angst, right? If I’m not going to write anything, I might as well not write anything in Rome for a few days. It’s all good until the money runs out.

Room for Improvement

Five months ago, I posted a video to YouTube. A few weeks later, I played it for my supervisor, who gave me some very good feedback. He suggested that I vary the sounds of it and put the voice nearer the end, in order to not give it away and consider doing something about the sameness of the video. He indicated that it was too short to be minimalist, but too unchanging to fill the entire duration.
So this is what I’ve been working on. And working on. And working on. Every change I make seems to make the video worse. Which is hardly encouraging. It’s hard to work on for that reason. And also because I picked sounds for it that make me feel very nervous and edgy. And also because the subject matter makes me squirm.
It’s not that it couldn’t be better, it’s that I can’t seem to make it better.
The deadline is fast approaching for the Transgender Film Festival (indeed, if it is not already passed) and I’ve shown this video once to a small group and gotten some feedback from the YouTube posting. It seems to resonate well with women and gender minorities / queers. If straight men aren’t moved by it as much, should I care? Or am I just annoyed because the changes I’m making are really not helping?
Can it still be part of my PhD if I can’t repair it?
None of the composed music I’ve done in the last year has been especially engaging.

Injection Report

I got registered with a new GP who suggested that I should keep stabbing myself. I should have objected. I hate doing it and I’m not good at it. For example, this time:
I shattered the ampoule and bits of it got in the T. Damn, I should have cleaned the outside with surgical spirits before opening it. I drew it into the needle and then pushed the needle into my leg. You’re supposed to draw back on the syringe to make certain you haven’t hit a blood vessel, so I did that and got air bubbles?!?! How is there an air pocket in my leg?
I decided to re-stab, but motherfucker, the needle was not as sharp on the second go. Ouch. The second time, I decided that air in my leg, must be a feature, so I pushed it in anyway.
So I put unsterile T in my leg with some air bubbles and a dull needle and my hands were shaking like hell. I am so going to get a nurse to do this in three weeks. That or a junkie.

New Information

DOROTHY: Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?
GLINDA:
You don’t need to be helped any longer.
You’ve always had the power to go back to
Kansas.

DOROTHY:
I have?

SCARECROW:
Then why didn’t you tell her before?

GLINDA:
Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She
had to learn it for herself.

I have a French friend, Sasha, staying with me for a couple of nights. He asked me why I wanted to change my name. I gave hi a look, but before I could speak, he continued, “It’s a gender neutral name in France.” And went on to tell me that it was exceedingly traditional.
Saint Céleste was the second bishop of Metz, around the end of the third century. My middle name is “Marie”, which is a traditional masculine middle name for Catholic French men. To pick an unfortunate example, it’s the middle name of Jean Marie Le Pen.
Sasha said, you can’t get much more traditional than that, the name of a bishop and then Marie as a middle name.
It’s somewhat archaic. In the 18th century, it would have been male all the time. Now, it’s more often given to girls, but still can go either way.
All my life, I’ve wished I had a gender neutral name.
What do you mean I’ve had it the entire time?!
I had filled out zero paperwork towards trying to get my name changed. It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, obviously, especially living abroad. I was going to wait until I could also change my gender marker, which will also require a new passport – and thus a new student visa. It took me months to get the last one, so you can see why I hesitate.
It’s certainly simpler not to change my name at all. Ok, in English, it’s almost always given to girls, but it’s not an English name. Really, what was my mom thinking giving me a French name in the first place? There’s no French in my family, even, except for a rumor that her maiden name had distantly French origins. Like, Norman Invasion sort of distant.
I have a hobby, and that’s second guessing myself.
But name wasn’t nearly as girly as I thought. Plus, I have a saint day, the 14th of October. (This is something that matters in Catholic school . . ..) And the saint was a dude. If I wanted to change my name because it was much too feminine, but it turns out to have masculine roots and a masculine present, well, that changes things.
In the states, nobody will have heard of such a thing, but it’s not common there anyway and I’m not going back in the next two years, so . . . What to do? I want to work this out sooner, rather than later. It’s a funny thing, Sasha brought it up because I was changing it, but never mentioned it earlier.
I feel kind of like Dorothy in that scene in the Wizard of Oz. (that’s so so gay.)