Moon Memo: Your memory lies
Moon Memo-February 1, 2025
Intro
Good morning from SE Portland, where I am listening to Old Amica on my headphones, and am waiting for news about a job I interviewed for. This was a busy week. Hangouts every day, three of them naked hangouts that turned into story telling hangouts. Today is wrestling. Before that: quiet.
The horizon is starting to pink a little bit, though hard to tell with the rain heavy clouds. Extra dark now that winter has decided to return. Rumors of snow, but those have changed.
Bored. Not a bad thing. Just true.
I turn 46 next week. My body is a 46 year old body. My brain is a 46 year old brain. My spirit is a 23 year old woman, ready to punch and stab if needed, who is also a quaker, who is also a convinced pacifist. This is a moon memo, a little slice into what's going on right now.
Memory Fails
I had a story that I told for years: my best friend from high school wanted to go to prom with her girlfriend. This was in the 90s: being gay was barely talked about even within the small world that we lived in of poetry and theater (though Sara was not a theater kid. Too insular. Too bookish. Too set in her small world.). And the school would not sell tickets to the two girls wanting to go to prom together. So in swoops the hero, in used blue suit and complicated gender, to be the "boy" in this situation. And so I took my best friend and her girlfriend to prom.
Except...
She came in smiling, hair mostly gray now, cut into a social worker bob. Big hugs and mugs of black tea. The usual family and disaster talk: brothers and their politics, mothers and their health, this fucking country, what the fuck. Married life talk: her little house and amazing wife, my new dyke husband.
And then.
"Remember when I took you to prom?"
"Misha, I never went to prom. Can you see me at prom?"
"No, I took you and what's her name...your girlfriend."
"Misha, I graduated a year before you. I never went to prom."
A trick of the memory. I've been telling that story for 25 years. Treating myself as a hero.
Turns out it wasn't prom. It was winter formal. And it wasn't Sara. It was two other friends, who weren't lesbians, who actually didn't like each other much at that point. I had taken my lesbian friend and heroed myself.
We moved on to dying grandmothers and trans health care, about how the hometown is a strip mall now, and we are glad to be done of it.
How much of my history is a story I've told myself, full of busted truths? How much of my myth is bullshit that I've told myself so much that it's accepted and yet completely false? Who knows. The memory is not the important thing. The important thing is that my friend of 30 years is happyish, is still quiet and funny, is still fierce and wonderful. And even now that I'm officially a girl, she treats me the same way, someone she said "you can just be a girl" a long time ago. (She verified that this, at least, was true. I thought at the time that meant a drag queen. I didn't see Misha in my future yet. I'm glad I found her.)
Living in the Catastrophe
First, you've gotta learn how to look away from the abyss. Take news and facebook and blsky and especially X off your phone. Tell your partner to set new passwords for them so you can't access them at all. If you must keep up with girls who you see once a year, if the service allows it, grap the RSS and send it to a reader.
News at certain times of the day. For me, first thing in the morning. Newsletters in the overnight: AP Headlines, Oregon Public broadcasting, Portland Mercury, Erin in the Morning. A good place to see news is on wikipedia, the current events summary. Treats the world like the whole world. Find it here)
Treat this like your grandfather reading papers. You don't have to let ubiquitous horrors into your life whenever it chooses to. This is how you get distracted. This is how you get sad and destroyed. I don't have time or energy to be sad and destroyed.
Turn off notifications. Make yourself able to be quiet sometimes. Do not disturb on. Earbuds in. Notebook in front of you. Process the world. Make your own world on paper.
Find people and spend time with them. Other trans women. Other queer people. Others that are doing the work. Others who need a friend checking on them. Get naked with them. Admire their chewed up trans bodies, the new bruises that their new lovers have left on them. Hold them and process trauma together.
Pick up your dyke husband from work. Tell them that you love them more than they will ever know. They will know.
Watch the rain from your window.
Find new music to try out.
When someone wants to only talk about the horrors, tell them to take that somewhere else. You can find any number of ways to feel horrible. Maybe not in a movie chat.
Breathe. Meditate. Pray. Cast spells.
Eat something green at least once a day.
Remember you are not alone. You are not alone. You are not alone.
Remember that the government is not the arbiter of if you are trans enough. You are. If you think you are trans, you are trans enough.
Remember that the overwhelm is the fucking point. You don't have to be overwhelmed. You can quiet the world a bit.
New Wallet, who's this?
Finally learning the dance with unemployment. Getting paid. Took a little tiny bit of the money and turned it into a new wallet. It's a stuff sheeth that can hold a notebook and some pens and has pockets for cards. Orange, so I can find it easy. I've put a little folder in it to hold receipts and cash. Put a Field Notes in it, so I can always be writing and living in the little notebook. Keep it closed with a rubber band. And there you go.
Always trying to find new ways to have less in the fanny packet. This little sheeth replaces my wallet and my notebook cover. Puts it together. Two less things to worry about.
Current everyday carry:
Phone
Notebook Wallet
Keys with Airtag
lipstick
flashlight
first aid kit
noise canceling earbuds so I can turn off the world if needed
Table shim (though I've run out of these. Need to order more.)
Mask because it's plague season.
Kindle when I know I'm going to be somewhere and reading.
All in the fanny pack.
Outro
I've started blogging again. You can find me at https://www.mishamoonpoetlaureate.com) most days. I still want to share on the internet, but I don't want to be whim to the algorhythm and the tools of the opressors any more.
Drink water. Take deep breathes. Have sex with your friends. Be kind to yourself. It's ok to feel overwhelmed, check out a little bit. The horror will find you, but you will be stronger than it is.
Love and stuff,
Misha Lynn Moon
