Moon Memo: Are You...?
Hello from Hillsdale, the Lucky Labrador Pub, across from the Multnomah Arts Center, where Jade is taking an intro to carpentry class, is making a bench. And I'm here drinking ginger ale and people watching, a ton of moms and dads and little children, drinking afternoon beers and coralling children.
My personal favorite was a little girl who came up to me and asked "are you like Olive, who was a boy but is now a girl?" Children get a pass, no matter how horrified their mothers are. "Yes, I am." "Oh nice." And then she wandered off, her curiousity sated.
"I'm so sorry," her mother said.
"Don't be. I'm glad she knows Olive."
This is a Moon Memo. Protect trans kids.
Writing Machine, again
The internet stopped working at our house last night, like it did for a lot of folks in our neighborhood. It happened after I downloaded all of wikipedia and wiktionary onto the Black Book, the new Linux machine. When I woke up this morning, same thing. No network. But I was able to keep going, write along on my new little machine, able to look up the definition of Grace, find out that it comes:
From [Middle English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle%20English "w:Middle English") [grace](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/grace#MiddleEnglish)_, from [Old French](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old%20French "w:Old French") [grace](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/grace#OldFrench)_ (modern [French](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French%20language "w:French language") [grâce](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/gr%C3%A2ce#French "grâce")), from [Latin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin "w:Latin") [grātia](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/gratia#Latin "gratia") (“kindness, favour, esteem”), from [grātus](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/gratus#Latin "gratus") (“pleasing”), from [Proto-Indo-European](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European%20language "w:Proto-Indo-European language") [*gʷerH-](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/Reconstruction%3AProto-Indo-European/g%CA%B7erH- "Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/gʷerH-") (“to praise, welcome”); compare [grateful](zim://4caae0eb-b46e-0c39-e18b-eb6a5c0a3165.zim/A/grateful#English "grateful").
And also search my 5000 notes saved on here in .md files, find that I have a great quote about grace:
Gratitude, like grace
Gratitude, like grace, is important because it operates from a different internal mechanism than the dominant operating mechanism of the world. It does not consider what is earned or unearned. It does not abide by such metrics we often use to calculate value. To practice it, then — to choose to practice it — is to take a radical stance against the aspects of our world that so often cause and perpetuate harm.
And this excellent quote:
Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead:
> Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.
And this amazing set of Techniques, from John Durham Peters:
“Write early in the morning, cultivate memory, reread core books, take detailed reading notes, work on several projects at once, maintain a thick archive, rotate crops, take a weekly Sabbath, go to bed at the same time, exercise so hard you can’t think during it, talk to different kinds of people including the very young and very old, take words and their histories seriously (i.e., read dictionaries), step outside of the empire of the English language regularly, look for vocabulary from other fields, love the basic, keep your antennae tuned, and seek out contexts of understanding quickly (i.e., use guides, encyclopedias, and Wikipedia without guilt).”
None of this is writing, but it gives me enough fucking around to be able to pump my brain a little bit, to get the words going, to do so without being hooked up to a network. No video. No endless scrolling through the horror machine. No chatting (though I have been texting with my friends Elodie and Syri, especially about the story above about Olive, about Madison, who is loudly singing as her parents shoosh her. Let her sing. Let her sing. Let her sing.).
Calm technology. The creator of that concept, Amber Case, said once "we are not bad at technology, technology is bad at us." And I kind of agree. Give me a screen and a keyboard and a way to answer questions but not fall into the churn of despair, and I'll thrive.
A Poem
Are You
Children get a pass, smaller wise ones
searching for patterns to hang their life on,
bold as their dresses and fumbling of words,
garble of meaning when everything's so new,
they get to ask what's under my skirts, search
the shadow of growth days before electro for
womanhood, compare it to mothers, teachers,
their friend Olive who was Oliver who lines up
with her now before nap time, who spins and
dances better than other girls, happy to be here,
are you like Olive, are you happy to be here?
**Selections from the day notes**
On my computers I have Obsidian syncing, and every day I live out of a daily page. It's a scratch pad I write into every day. Makes it easy to keep track of what I do each day, and to write small thoughts that I once would have put on facebook. Here's some selections this week:
I am the problematic woman who will not scrutinize the historical women that came before me, looking for the flaws in their thinking in a historical context that made them illegal. Deeply problematic of me.
New supercontext! New Supercontext!!!! YAY!!!!
Writing more poems about dead trans girls. Gods.
Today has been extremely busy. It's not the longest day that I have had, but it's definitely a really heavy one.
his is how this looks right here. And here is how I want to live. And here is how I'm living. And part of living here is being rude and angry about serving shade for very little reason.
They looked so cute together, the two guys being guys, the two soft butches being butches.
Thinking about Stevie a little bit today. There was no way for trancendence in her personal mythology. All she had was imminence and oblivion afterwards.
How could we have kept her alive? She was wired for the razor, and I don't think there was any way she was going to make it out alive. But I didn't know her. Not really. So what do I know?
I don't know if any of that is true. I don't know anything about Stevie except that she made music that scares me and makes me feel really happy. All at the same time.
"I hope all the trans girls reading this know how important it is to me personally that they survive."
The irony that Stevie wrote that right before she killed herself is not lost on me right now.
I don't need forever. I need as long as you live.
Outro
Sorry to get heavy at the end. It's heading into anniversary season. Stevie and Graye and others. It's going to get hot and sweaty, remind me that I have a body, and that is beautiful. I hope you all feel beautiful too.
Love and stuff,
Misha Lynn Moon