Moon Memo: Jean Cocteau and his crazy Twins
Good morning. It's Saturday, and I'm sitting in a coffee shop I've been coming to since I moved here in 1997. It had a new slap of paint in the last few months since I came in here. More light, which is good and bad (I liked the gloom). Coctea Twins on the stereo. More on that in a second.
Everything has been slow and achy. It's muggy here in Portland. Summer rain, and a heat dome coming. Everyone scurrying to get their stuff done before we have to hide in our air conditioning.
I love my job, and I'm tired of being surrounded by people all day. The constant talk of animals is very distracting, and the constant tussle of dogs is getting to be a bit much. I'm getting the work done, and I seem to be doing a good job. But the constant peopling is just blowing my gasket. I'm excited when I get to work from home (Update: first work from home day yesterday. Got work done. Got to be naked. Everything I dream of.)
Like many caregivers I have to learn to be more selfish. To ask for help when I need help. To be willing to say no when I need to say no. To look out the window in the middle of the work day, and marvel at the clouds painted behind the fir trees. To watch the eagle children begin their work of learning the neighborhood. To watch the slow breaking down of metal roofs. But mostly, to remember that it is ok to say "I need this for my body, to start loving my body, to start feeling that my body is beautiful."
The new girl is offering me some of that on Sunday. "You lay back. I'll be tender to you. You let go." We'll see if that is good. If that gives me reasons to be joyous in a less bingy way and more in a "this is my body, and it deserves attention" kind of way. The only person that has given me that in a way that felt good is Jade. Can I let go for someone else.
Learning to say no when people need supports, when you don't have capacity to give them. That's a key thing, too. It's hard when people struggle. And it's ok to say no.
The world struggles and it snorts and it is rough and it is hard. And we do what we can. And sometimes, that means retreat.
Cocteau Twins playing at the coffee shop, reminding me that I became a girl to be like a 1992 ethereal girl. That is not what I became, but it is part of who I am on the inside. Tori Amos. Liz Frasier. Liz Phair. Later, Alanis. Bjork. PJ Harvey. They gave me womanhood as something tough, and vulnerable, and magic. We have aged into each other a little bit. I have aged into something tough, vulnerable, and magic.
Music for me is anger and transcendence. It's always been so. That's kind of what transition has been for me, too. Anger at my body. Transcendence in spirit.
Sex kind of falls into this. Sex is anger at my body and the search for transcendence. A poetry of the body. A poet once said "A poem is a structure you create to hold something that your body cannot hold for long." And that is often what sex feels like to me. It's a way to click away from the body while being in the body. A glamour of pleasure that makes me move on.
" Jean Cocteau developed it further, in detail, from the artist’s point of view: Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own speciality. Do not despair if your speciality appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
Carl Abrahamsson"
Reading about Enya. How she somehow made it through most of her career without having to do anything that she didn't really want to do. She was outrageously successful on her second album. So she lives in her castle with her cats. And writes music when she wants to. And works really really hard at what she does. She does the thing she does. I love that.
Tonight, Queen of Thorns. Fifteen trans women (and Jade, and a cis coworker) coming together to watch the Opera of Violence (pro wrestling). I worry about it. Too many breakups and polycules and dislikes and everything to keep up with. But we can share in one thing: the show. And that's what I care about right now. The show.
I love you. I miss you. Be well.
Misha Lynn Moon