I've been crying to it all of my life
Oct. 11th, 2012 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenIt's turning into a clean and chilly autumn, here. Several things make a post:
1. It's National Coming Out Day (in America). I hate National Coming Out Day. Have I mentioned that? I hate National Coming Out Day. I'd hate it less if it were called National Coming Out While White, Male And Otherwise Privileged Day or even, to paraphrasethingswithwings, National Stop Being A Jerk To Queers Day. That would be great and I would celebrate that every year with balloons and a parade.
I have said this before: if only it were that simple. If only we weren't brown, with brown families; if only we hadn't found our hearts' calling in old, unflinching professions; if only our own communities didn't turn on us as easily as everyone else; if only we didn't make other choices every day, if only you could make choices in a vacuum, if only it were as easy as one day a year. (If you could avoid coming out as brown, would you? I'm not sure. Of course you can't, or at least you quite often can't: so I own that choice, and in recent years have deliberately chosen every day to live a brown life. To paraphrasethingswithwings again, people who argue from the position that being queer is not a choice and people should be accepted as queer because they're born that way - those people deny that queer identities, lives and histories are to be celebrated. I think the same thing about being brown, mostly, which is hard: because it's not like it's easy to be brown in a white-dominated society (and world), but it's less easy still when you can never quite be brown enough, or brown in the right ways, for the community you come from. This is why I got rid of the woman who was teaching me Hindi script for a while. "Soon you'll have caught up!" she enthused. I said, caught up with whom, exactly, as dryly as possible, gave her her money and never went back. I have no patience for those who believe that being brown isn't a continuously evolving process - that I, here, on the cusp of a new world, am not as much brown as my grandfather, who loved me, and would never have me remade.
But making one choice like that is hard; making another is not one I wish to make. My respect and kudos to those who do.)
I did come out to a friend yesterday. I told her, honestly, that I feel comfortable telling my friends I'm queer here on my own territory; at the time I knew her first I was living in another country, and they do things differently there. Someone at work today said something awful about queer people today; I said, again dryly, that around one in ten people is LGBT and there were more than ten people in the room. I am very far from being a crusader. There's the spiel.
2. I was blown away by Julia Gillard addressing the Australian House of Representatives on the sexism and misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition. Just... blown away. I'm embarrassed by how little I know about Australian politics - I wrote a paper once on Australian reproductive rights law and that is the sum of my knowledge - and I don't know much about how Gillard's government has served its people in other ways. But this did my heart good.
3. So next week I am seeing both Dar Williams and the Gaslight Anthem! I am super-excited about both, but particularly the Gaslight Anthem, because I love Dar Williams, I love her, I want to get I am the one who lives with the ocean tattooed on me at some point, but at heart it's a reasonable and rational grown-up love. Something about the Gaslight Anthem bypasses my brain and goes straight to etched-into-my-bones, stars-in-my-eyes, every-word-handwritten-in-my-heart-oh. Shim says he often comes into a room and thinks, "why's she listening to early Springsteen - oh." I just, oh, oh, the Gaslight Anthem.
(I sometimes think I will grow out of being a fangirl. And then I think, wouldn't that be growing out of love.)
3. Speaking of fannish love. I am watching Fringe again. I stopped round about halfway through season 4 and now it's back and I want to get caught up for the finale. I stopped round about "A Short Story About Love" - because urgh. No. Olivia in the season 4 universe is another Olivia - but like them all she is wonderful. I love the idea of her being raised by Nina. I am fascinated by what she did to her stepfather. And I just, I refuse to believe she would destroy all that. I just. I love Olivia and Peter but not that much. But I'm actually enjoying it just as much as I was, once I'd got past that - because oh, Fringe.
The thing is I am not even fannish about Fringe. I'm not, though - I don't really want to write fic about it or meta about it or whatever. (Icons and gifs, though - hiiii, there are no non-beautiful people in this cast.) I guess the reason for that is, I believe it's a complete story: there are no shadowy gaps in the edges of Fringe, at least not the character ones, the ones I want to fill, because you see the whole thing evolve bit by bit. I especially love what they do in "Peter" and "Subject 13", it's a much better approach than say, The X-Files, which would drizzle the backstory out over five seasons and then fizzle unimpressively at the end anyway. No, I'm not bitter.
("Subject 13", though! Peter on the lake, surrounded by ice - that destroys me.)
4.There is no number 4. No, wait, there is a number 4! I have started to watch Babylon 5, after ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tau_sigma lent it to me, and. And. Well, it's pretty bad, isn't it. It's really bad. The acting is so bad. But, I love Londo and G'Kar and I think they should do stand-up. I think the whole show would be better if it were called Londo and G'Kar: Live At The Apollo. I also love Ivanova, Delenn and kinda sorta, Lennier. And the worldbuilding, a little - I made noises of total delight at some throwaway line about waiting in line at the toilets for methane-breathers - and people tell me I'll like it from the second season, so I keep watching it. But I tell you guys, it's a good thing I'm a sucker for a portentous opening narration.
And otherwise, I keep on going on. My job is quite dull at the moment; I wrote a very long and very complicated letter today; this weekend I had planned to do nothing but watch Fringe and eat Swedish Fish, but I suspect there may be work involved. And so on.
1. It's National Coming Out Day (in America). I hate National Coming Out Day. Have I mentioned that? I hate National Coming Out Day. I'd hate it less if it were called National Coming Out While White, Male And Otherwise Privileged Day or even, to paraphrase
thingswithwings, National Stop Being A Jerk To Queers Day. That would be great and I would celebrate that every year with balloons and a parade. I have said this before: if only it were that simple. If only we weren't brown, with brown families; if only we hadn't found our hearts' calling in old, unflinching professions; if only our own communities didn't turn on us as easily as everyone else; if only we didn't make other choices every day, if only you could make choices in a vacuum, if only it were as easy as one day a year. (If you could avoid coming out as brown, would you? I'm not sure. Of course you can't, or at least you quite often can't: so I own that choice, and in recent years have deliberately chosen every day to live a brown life. To paraphrase
thingswithwings again, people who argue from the position that being queer is not a choice and people should be accepted as queer because they're born that way - those people deny that queer identities, lives and histories are to be celebrated. I think the same thing about being brown, mostly, which is hard: because it's not like it's easy to be brown in a white-dominated society (and world), but it's less easy still when you can never quite be brown enough, or brown in the right ways, for the community you come from. This is why I got rid of the woman who was teaching me Hindi script for a while. "Soon you'll have caught up!" she enthused. I said, caught up with whom, exactly, as dryly as possible, gave her her money and never went back. I have no patience for those who believe that being brown isn't a continuously evolving process - that I, here, on the cusp of a new world, am not as much brown as my grandfather, who loved me, and would never have me remade.But making one choice like that is hard; making another is not one I wish to make. My respect and kudos to those who do.)
I did come out to a friend yesterday. I told her, honestly, that I feel comfortable telling my friends I'm queer here on my own territory; at the time I knew her first I was living in another country, and they do things differently there. Someone at work today said something awful about queer people today; I said, again dryly, that around one in ten people is LGBT and there were more than ten people in the room. I am very far from being a crusader. There's the spiel.
2. I was blown away by Julia Gillard addressing the Australian House of Representatives on the sexism and misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition. Just... blown away. I'm embarrassed by how little I know about Australian politics - I wrote a paper once on Australian reproductive rights law and that is the sum of my knowledge - and I don't know much about how Gillard's government has served its people in other ways. But this did my heart good.
3. So next week I am seeing both Dar Williams and the Gaslight Anthem! I am super-excited about both, but particularly the Gaslight Anthem, because I love Dar Williams, I love her, I want to get I am the one who lives with the ocean tattooed on me at some point, but at heart it's a reasonable and rational grown-up love. Something about the Gaslight Anthem bypasses my brain and goes straight to etched-into-my-bones, stars-in-my-eyes, every-word-handwritten-in-my-heart-oh. Shim says he often comes into a room and thinks, "why's she listening to early Springsteen - oh." I just, oh, oh, the Gaslight Anthem.
(I sometimes think I will grow out of being a fangirl. And then I think, wouldn't that be growing out of love.)
3. Speaking of fannish love. I am watching Fringe again. I stopped round about halfway through season 4 and now it's back and I want to get caught up for the finale. I stopped round about "A Short Story About Love" - because urgh. No. Olivia in the season 4 universe is another Olivia - but like them all she is wonderful. I love the idea of her being raised by Nina. I am fascinated by what she did to her stepfather. And I just, I refuse to believe she would destroy all that. I just. I love Olivia and Peter but not that much. But I'm actually enjoying it just as much as I was, once I'd got past that - because oh, Fringe.
The thing is I am not even fannish about Fringe. I'm not, though - I don't really want to write fic about it or meta about it or whatever. (Icons and gifs, though - hiiii, there are no non-beautiful people in this cast.) I guess the reason for that is, I believe it's a complete story: there are no shadowy gaps in the edges of Fringe, at least not the character ones, the ones I want to fill, because you see the whole thing evolve bit by bit. I especially love what they do in "Peter" and "Subject 13", it's a much better approach than say, The X-Files, which would drizzle the backstory out over five seasons and then fizzle unimpressively at the end anyway. No, I'm not bitter.
("Subject 13", though! Peter on the lake, surrounded by ice - that destroys me.)
4.
tau_sigma lent it to me, and. And. Well, it's pretty bad, isn't it. It's really bad. The acting is so bad. But, I love Londo and G'Kar and I think they should do stand-up. I think the whole show would be better if it were called Londo and G'Kar: Live At The Apollo. I also love Ivanova, Delenn and kinda sorta, Lennier. And the worldbuilding, a little - I made noises of total delight at some throwaway line about waiting in line at the toilets for methane-breathers - and people tell me I'll like it from the second season, so I keep watching it. But I tell you guys, it's a good thing I'm a sucker for a portentous opening narration.And otherwise, I keep on going on. My job is quite dull at the moment; I wrote a very long and very complicated letter today; this weekend I had planned to do nothing but watch Fringe and eat Swedish Fish, but I suspect there may be work involved. And so on.
