What Happened

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:53:00 +0000

Gasping with heartbeat determination
lungs collapsed beneath the weight
her face went pale at the sight of me.

tubes pouring out of nostrils, elbows,
wrists, the blue overtook and a swarm
of nurses descend to the work they
dread but trained for anyway.

Eyes begged to close, chest crying
for it all to stop, a topaz pill placed
under my tongue bitter and sharp
and the smell of fresh plastic as
the oxygen mask covers my tears.

camera smile

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:03:00 +0000

Sometimes I look at pictures of you and I imagine what other people see: coy, shy, sexy smiles and the fierce eyes of a powerful femme. Sometimes I try to imagine what I could see if I didn't know truths and histories and what it means to smile for the camera no matter what rotting mess is in my heart.

I've read what you've written. I've heard you cry on the phone. I know you know my secrets. I'm not afraid of you -- any more than I'm afraid of everyone.

I look at pictures of you and I see a six, nine, fourteen year old taught to seduce some man who doesn't understand the definition of father or uncle or whatever job he couldn't perform. So he taught you to perform and jump through the ridiculous hoops your mother couldn't clear. And you smiled through it all, with eight-year-old seductress eyes and a toothy grin that makes me want to hear you call me Daddy.

My father taught me how to forget my childhood. Why can't I forget yours?

4:00am

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:43:00 +0000

In the still of deep night I can finally think. Through exhaustion and frustration I can feel the quiet surround me. Comfort me. I am safe here.

I don't feel safe anywhere, really. My own blood almost killed me. My blood. The stuff that comes out of my body every month. The stuff that pours from my nose every day. My blood clots too much. Clotting -- that process by which our blood saves our lives. I have to take medicine that thins my blood and makes it no longer save me from bleeding to death. If I cut my finger off while chopping onions for dinner, I could bleed to death. If I fall and hit my nose against something I could bleed to death. Hell, just blowing my nose makes it bleed right now. What happens if I get gay bashed? Raped? The option of just trying to survive an attack isn't really there anymore.

I know. I live in Vermont. I'm not likely to get bashed or raped. It's not likely I'll cut my finger off, or even fall on my face.

I've tried not to wallow in what happened, how I could have deduced what was wrong, why I never thought of DVT as a possibility, and why I never pushed the issue of my deep sense that something was wrong in my body. I haven't been very successful.

The more I read about DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis, I should make a glossary) the more I realize that what I thought was a pulled muscle in my thigh/groin was probably a blood clot. I rode in a car, trotted all over Florida, rode in a car, then gallivanted all over Montpelier with a freaking blood clot in my leg. At any moment my body could have pushed that clot into my heart and killed me. Or into my brain and I could have had a stroke. If that doesn't make someone ponder the existence of a higher power...

Or the power of fate, or luck, or whatever. I'm not a "divine plan" kind of gal, really. Or rather, I don't think whatever higher power that "planned" us continues to plan and micromanage. I think of Divinity as if we're little wind-up dolls. Gd wound up this existence and is watching. Maybe once in a while, ze intervenes and makes sure all the dolls don't fall off the cosmic table. But for the most part, no interference. I think. I admit I'm not really sure. But this is my best guess. So the wind-up doll that is me wasn't plucked from the brink of death by Gd or anything. I simply didn't wind down as quickly as another doll might have.

But really. What happened? I got a blood clot, it broke up, traveled through my heart into my lungs and did serious damage.

(I'll finish this at some point)

I had every intention of going to sleep early tonight...

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:56:00 +0000

I'm exhausted but my mind is racing. About a week ago I decided to go without my portable oxygen while I went to therapy. I got cocky after that and went the whole day without. Going from 15 liters (per minute) of oxygen, to 5L, to 3L, to 2L, to none within about a week was just too much for my poor body. I've been sleeping and resting and gasping for breath all week. My heart is pounding more easily. My head swims in some pool of jello most of the time. Writing is the last thing I feel like I can do.

There's also wicked good music on the radio (wgdr.org) right now. I miss doing my radio show so much.

I'm still losing weight... it appears to mostly be edema from the emboli and after-effects.

I dug into some old poetry the other day. I feel inspired in my head. I feel like a sloth in my body.

I'm going to tell Colleen that I want to do respiratory physical therapy. This is big. I could just stumble along in a "I don't really deserve to feel well" kind of defeatist bullshit haze like I've been known to do for much of my life. But I've been near death recently. I want my life to mean more than I sometimes think it does. The first things I need to do in order to achieve this is heal. Part of that healing is psychological. So I need to heal my frightened self, my wounded heart and lungs, and I need to learn how to get stronger. But healing first. Healing. Must heal.

I do deserve to feel well. I deserve to be off oxygen and not ache constantly and breathe without coughing. I deserve the energy to think without getting dizzy. I deserve as much health as my body will give me. I'm worth working for.

Okay. Now I must try to sleep.

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:03:00 +0000

I've been remiss in telling what happened. The last week or so has been tougher than I expected. I'm still working on getting back into a daily writing routine.

I keep thinking that I'll get an epiphany -- that with my near-death hoopla, I'll have some new joie-de-vivre. It's just not there. I'm not necessarily complacent or waiting death or whatever either. I'm finding I have less patience with my own paranoia and melodrama. Whatever happens I'll figure it out. However I feel it will change. However near to death, I will die when the universe calls me and there will be nothing I can do about it.

So I'll do all of my preventative stuff. I'll exercise and heel pump and eat right and practice deep breathing and keep an eye on my piss and shit and take my medicines and make sure I'm not bleeding internally and all of that stupid stuff. Because it's only stupid when I'm tired, and even then it's not stupid at all. It keeps me alive and as healthy as possible and I need all the health I can muster if I'm going to make something of this life I've still got.

That's the epiphany, I guess. I want to make something of this life I've still got. I want desperately to deserve being saved. I'm simply not yet sure I do.

work in progress

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:38:00 +0000

I remember months of that word I hate

Sedentary

I remember months of wheezing,
struggling, coughing

sedentary

blur, confusion, exhaustion

I remember explainations, excuses
emergency

X-Ray, contrast dye, embolism, "infarc"

I remember falling
on the hospital bed
gasping, swollen,
gasping, collapsing

her indifferent face
now different
running, yelling

gasping

Welcome (me) Back

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:00:00 +0000

I've not been a very faithful blogger in the past. I don't know how I'll fare this time around.

Almost three weeks ago, on January 26, 2010, after months of labored breathing and curtailing exercise and generalized anxiety, I had my first serious incident of hyperventilation. The week before I'd had some severe breathing episodes and for months I've had a cough, so I figured it was asthma and anxiety even though I'd never experienced anxiety like this before. J (my partner) came downstairs and helped me calm down and get my breath back, then I went upstairs. It happened all over again after climbing the stairs and then I slept fitfully though the night.

The next day was difficult. I was okay if I didn't move. At all. If I moved -- even turned around or stretched I started to hyperventilate. I waited and waited and put off the inevitable but finally J took me to the ER.

I didn't mean like this.

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 01:12:00 +0000

When I told you I'm not a man, I didn't mean that scheming bitch,

yelling back, hitting back, leaving without a word to the children.

When I told you I'm not a man, I didn't mean that scared little boy

hiding in your shadow, writing your goodbyes, avoiding your eyes,

praying she/he can just hold on long enough for you to heal.

When I told you I'm not a man, I didn't mean like this: scared little

girl curled up in her blood, her tears, full of hate and hoping you

might be different. When I told you I'm not a man, I didn't mean

it like a mating call, I didn't mean it like a daughter seeking a home.

HR:WtF

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:03:00 +0000

So if Ican manage to make music nice enough for me to share, I'll do so under the moniker "HR What-the-Fuck". HR or H.R. is my own special nit-picky question. For radio announce-ability I'll suggest HR:WtF. So maybe I should just go with that. Fuck it, I wanna go make some more music.

But I'm not going to make more music right now. Now is the time for writing. Blogging. Communicating, in a way.

But alas, I was fed lunch by my sweetie and now I can not think. More soonish.

Suicide Box

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:01:00 +0000

It's an idea I've had for a while. Nothing real, or corporeal in any sense. Not as some subliminal expression of my desires. I really enjoy living, even when it's difficult/painful. A science fictional story, perhaps. Maybe a sf narrative poem. I think that's the best implementation of a sf poem.

But the concept of a suicide box is very cyberpunk, or distopian, or whatever you want to call it. I wouldn't glorify it so much as to call it speculative, unless I put a spin on it where no suicides actually happen.

Along the lines of my idea of a story called "The Perfect Machine" -- not so much a machine that works perfectly, but a machine that creates perfection somehow. Or taking the stark concepts of the poem "Howl" and making a sf world out of it.

I often lack the commitment for fiction. I have a hard time separating ficiton and reality, and when my darker ideas push at me to come out onto paper or screen, it's a challenge. How do I balance the darkness with the real joy I feel in my day-to-day life?

Sometimes it spills out of me, like today. I cry in front of the family, drawing connections between dots that only barely exist. The rain makes my head throb clog, my eyes rolling up into my head. Everything hurts. Everything is pain, painful, embodying regions of my body in a macrocosmic orgy of resentment and shame and aches.

More later, must lay down for a bit.

Incantation, roughest draft.

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:40:00 +0000

(first draft transcribed)

Allah, Allah, Allah,
why have I forsaken thee?
For fear of retribution
fear of judgment.

But not Judgment I fear. But not this incantation
of repetition, not this whirling storm of words,
not this dervish in my heart.

Cry out for justice.
Cry out for freedom.

Cry out for the pain
of childhoods lost then found
then abandoned in acrid bottles
waste baskets full of youthful tissue.

(Passing) Thoughts On Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:26:00 +0000

I have no idea why I keep this blog. I'm terrible at it. People hardly read it, mostly because I post once a year or so. I can not concentrate long enough for expository writing any more. My brain can not hold on to ideas over a period of weeks or even days. I've tried, I've practiced. I am just not wired that way any more.

I work in fits and starts -- short poems that seem to come out of thin air. I sit and think and game and read and finally something trickles out. Sometimes it pours out. But I'm not a "professional" writer anymore, if I ever was one.

See, I'm about 7 minutes into writing and I drifted off, my eyes rolling about the room, my mind wondering about what to eat for supper and why I'm so dizzy all the time...

When I Hate Myself, I Think About You

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:33:00 +0000

Islam taught me that hate breeds hate. Sure, the "if I hate my neighbor, he may hate me back" kind of lesson is obvious. But I'm talking about the hate we rarely speak. Hate like bricks through my ribcage, eating my tongue.

When I hate myself, I think about everything you ever told me.

When I don't shave my face I look like a pedophile on work release.
When I don't shave my head I look like a pedophile who hasn't yet been caught.
When I eat I look disgusting.
When I'm naked I smell disgusting. Sometimes clothing doesn't help.
When I look at you I want to [strike that]

Some things I can not repeat. Some times I can not remember.

Sometimes I think I must have made it up.

(hopefully more soon)

crip+math

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:43:00 +0000

Sometimes when I am awake at night, unable to sleep because of pain, I think about my body. I feel the hum and thrum of muscles straining to heal from this phantom illness. I feel the ache of joints working hard to keep this straining body together. I feel the sweat on my neck, the numbness in my back. I feel my left toe twitch and dance from sciatica.

One plus one equals pain.

The sqaure root of pain is me.

Sometimes when I lay down to sleep my spine cries out, too weak or exausted to bend properly. Sometimes cigarette smoke slips through my door. Sometimes the construction creates more sawdust than I can take. Sometimes the paint buckets aren't closed tightly. Sometimes I forget about a pan and mold starts to form in the damp corners.

When my head throbs and thrums I think about my corners. Dark, rusty, damp, I wriggle into crippled fetus and grab at my hand with shaking thighs. (I can feel the tears already. I need this I even need the tears but please whichever god is real please don't let anyone hear?) My hand is a fist reluctant to do any other job, but I coax a finger to stroke promising angels and sunlight.

Four plus two equals fucked.

Finger plus clitoris equals pain.

I search in vain for porn that reflects me. I end up doing algebra with skinny girls who sound enough like me for lying. Wasting cramping hips thrust forward. Thighs quivering with fatigue clamp and cry and the tears build up the tears creep up the tears well up in my cunt, gut, scarred chest.

Nine times three equals bulldagger.

I am reduced to machinery, loud and embarassing and there's no latch or lock on my door I can't hide this but it's late I am alone while family sleeps shrouded by night. Low buzz transfers electricity through my thumb up my arm as low goes to high and back again in a morse-code-rythm.

Building and welling this bullcunt swollen with pride and rage, moving now in starts, this pussy dagger stabs at bliss and hope not to miss every time. I feel sweat form where my arthritic knees bend, come form where only my lover's hand caresses, tears form from my heart to my forehead and all at once an explosion of shame and defiance and delight and a despair I only feel in this solitary moment, this isolated pleasure.

Unplugged, uncurled, I am undone: an infant crying while being taken from her mother's arms.

Passing Thoughts #3

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 03:32:00 +0000

I still miss my breasts.

People told me it would pass. That feeling the phantom sway of bosom would ebb and eventually trail off into my new freedom. People told me I could wear v-necks, play pool, stand on the bus without an all-consuming awareness of the size of my breasts. I should be freem from the shackles of femininity.

I never felt shackled by my own femininity – I never felt I had enough to fetter me, honestly. I felt bound by society’s response to my breasts. The confusion, fascination, or fury people inevitably felt in reply to my shaved head butch frame with tits that no longer fit into an affordable bra. Some would shout out excitement or confusion at what they saw, and then as my stance or words made it clear my breasts weren’t available to them the anger would grow. By the time I walked past people on the street, some tried to beat me up. Some succeeded. People followed me home, determined to prove I was just as available to them as any other person with huge tits. It never failed. The shirts that never fit right, the pool cue chalk dust on the pockets of my button downs, the strangers on public transit accidentally rubbing up against me never bothered me that much. It was the anger that I wasn’t what I seemed.

And still, I miss my breasts.

Passing Thoughts #2

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:45:00 +0000

First off, you might notice that the title has changed. I think it better communicates what I want to do with this blog. I want to write about my thoughts on passing, but I don't anticipate anything too academic. "Passing Zone" implies that this is a space for the enjoyment of passing, and that's not what I want to write about either.

Passing, for me, is about every day life and the compromises I make to get along in a world that is actively hostile to me as a queer, fat, disabled, butch lesbian. It's about being mistaken for something or someone I'm not. It's about armor and when I choose to take it off. Putting my armor on is never a choice -- passing is not fun for me, though it does sometimes make my life easier or safer.

I hope to really dig into how I pass. All the different ways people misinterpret me and how those misinterpretations can make my life easier at a given moment. Passing isn't just a trans* thing where someone finally gets to be seen as they wish to be seen. In fact, I submit that "passing" in this context is a misnomer. Passing is about seeming what or who we are not.

I also hope to invite friends and acquaintances to guest-post eventually. But for now, I'm going to work up to a regular blog here. Weekly is the ultimate goal.

First up: my day-to-day life, a snapshot of a late-30s passing butch in Winooski, Vermont.

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Shahn) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 21:08:00 +0000

Welcome to "passing zone" -- my blog about life as a passing butch post-ftm and all that jazz.

I just got into school, returning to Goddard College after a couple years off. I'll be writing and reading and I'm deleriously excited, honestly. But to go to school where I've been Serena and she and then Shahn and he and now Shahn and she -- it's a little nervous-making. Even a progressive school like Goddard where trannies are accepted a lot... I'm nervous. I'll need to come out constantly, at least for the first couple days. I hated it the first time around. I'm sure I'll hate it again. But my family will be there with me, so I'll be okay.

I want to get my lit-zine up and running, as well as fleshing out Shahn Dot Net, as well as maybe making a little paperzine. And reading, reading, reading!

Anyway, I hope people read this.