You are My Sister & The Modern Life of the Soul

We're just back from a trip to New York - our valentine's day gift to each other & part of our ongoing effort to balance life in small-town america with some urban cultural opportunities. Here are a couple of highlights:

Museum of Modern Art's exhibition of Edvard Munch work: The Modern Life of the Soul.
Use the link above & watch the virtual tour accompanied by the exhibit's complete audio tape. We only had 20 minutes in the museum, but it's always worth the trip & the online virtual tour is really great.


Tibet House fundraiser concert at Carnegie Hall. This was the main reason for the trip - an opportunity to see some of our favorite performers at one concert, including Laurie Anderson, Damien Rice and Sufjan Stevens. One of the other performers, Antony (from Antony & The Johnsons) was the most unexpected & happy surprises of the trip. We didn't know anything about Antony until he came out for a duet with Laurie Anderson. Sort of a frumpy, gender-bender guy without much stage presence - and in the duet with Laurie he was just sort of tossing in a few background vocals & didn't seem of much interest. Later in the concert he came out, with his purse in tow, sort of shuffled his way to the piano, sat down & started playing "You are My Sister". What a wonderful and sweetly simple song. It was so moving & so well done, in general, but the connection I have to my sisters & with the loss of Marsha & Pam to breast cancer made the piece particularly moving. If you've got iTunes, you can buy a copy from the online store - although it's a version with Boy George, which I actually think is a bit overdone, but it's the only version I see out there.

We were also able to meet up with our friend Daniel & get caught up on his life over breakfast at Tyler Florence's restaurant Cafeteria. Good food, but it was outshined by good conversation ;)

Sadly, there wasn't time to go for a run in Central Park - something I really love. But soon, Corey will be back in town & Laura will be moving there, so we'll have more excuses to visit & other opportunities to go running in the park.

A few gay thoughts

Whether it's the recent release & subsequent fanfare of Brokeback Mountain, or the fact that I've started working with the company's diversity council, or our recent search for a church in the area, I'm not sure, but issues related to sexual orientation seem to be at the forefront lately. And while I'm genuinely happy with the dialog that it creates & opportunities to educate others & myself, there are some real frustrations that I've been struggling with. In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

1. "I didn't choose. Did you?" A friend & co-worker (straight woman in her early 30's) and I were having lunch, talking about the diversity council. She's someone I consider fairly cosmopolitan, so I was taken back a bit when she said, "I really don't understand why people have to judge others just because of a lifestyle choice". Of course, I reminded her that it isn't a choice - did she choose to be straight at some point - and of course she was quick to try to set things, well, straight (so to speak). But it was out there. And now it feels to me in all my conversations & observations that this is a fundamental problem: that so many people with good intentions are thinking "hey, I shouldn't judge people just because of a choice." I feel this underlying conversations in church, on the diversity council and even in my family. So here it is, for the record, based on my personal experience: it isn't a choice. I knew from the time I started developing crushes in grade school. The only choice I made was to hide it, because I had already heard enough of the bullshit comments to know that it wasn't something I could share with my family or friends. Let me repeat, it isn't a choice.
   
2. And even if someone DOES choose, you still shouldn't judge. Yes, there are bisexuals, which means that they can be authentically attracted to people of either gender. And yes, there are people that self-identify, for a while, as being gay or bi, and turns out, well, maybe they were just sick of the bullshit of straight men (or women) and decide that they might as well give it a whirl with someone of the same sex. And yes, that confuses the hell out of the situation (because - SEE - they DID choose). So, what's a straight person to do/say? Here's what you do: don't judge anyway - it really isn't a good way to be living your life - going around being all angry & judgemental & all. I mean, after all, I really don't see anything in the bible anyway that says "judge not, lest ye be judged, unless it's some queer or someone in a same-sex relationship, then judge the fuck out of them - hey, go ahead & stone the fuckers - that'll be a hoot". You know? So what do you say, when you're confronted with that gay guy at work or the lesbian at church or the guy in the same-sex relationship that was with a woman for 10 years & now thinks he'll give being gay a spin - what do you say to him when you want to let him know that you're not a judgemental prick but you're not sure if he's authentically gay, or bisexual or straight but in a same-sex relationship? How about this (using my co-worker example above): "I really don't understand why people have to judge others." Period. See? Easy as pie.
   
3. I don't want to be forced into being a revolutionary, do you? For anyone straight reading this, I ask: if, every time you kissed your girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband goodbye at the airport, every time you held his/her hand in church when something felt very powerful, if every time you filled out a form that asked for your spouses name you were glared at or applauded, or received comments of disgust or praise, if every time you had a simple personal moment with the person you love & it happened to be out in public someplace, that personal moment was elevated by everyone around you to the status of an EVENT - something that was going to be talked about at dinner tables for good or bad, wouldn't you start to resent it? If you had to do an inventory of your surroundings every time you wanted to hold your whatever's hand on a walk, out of fear that you might litterally be killed if the wrong person saw it, wouldn't you start to resent it? Good. I do to.
   
4. My partner deserves health care coverage just as much as your wife does. We share our lives together, we're committed to each other, we support each other and make mutual decisions on everything important in our lives. We decide the direction we want to go in the future together. We comfort each other every day & celebrate our joys together. We inspire each other, we challenge each other and we lift each other up. And, here's the important part: we're not married because LEGALLY WE CAN'T GET MARRIED. If we could get married, we would. So let me have the same rights and responsibilities that every other employee at the company has. It won't bankrupt the company. It won't cause a panic from investors. It may piss off some fundie nuts, but eventually you'll piss them off anyway, so why not do it in a way that helps out your dedicated employees & helps you attract a wider pool of talent to your company.

That's it. Maybe more later.

Relay For Life

Relay for Life is happening July 21st - July 22nd. For those of you interested in participating, visit the Relay for Life homepage. If you are interested in making a donation, please contact me.

The things we hold dear

In our home office, where I usually spend at least 10 hours a day (which is where i am as I write this) on the floor next to my desk, under an east-facing window overlooking the finch feeders, there's a pillow that I can't bear to move. Anyone walking into the office, without knowing the context, would immediately be struck by how out of place the pillow is - a standard bed pillow, on the floor in the office. And it really doesn't even do much good to add context - that the pillow is where our dear sweet Meshu spent most of her day - keeping me company through conference calls and budget discussions and scope statement reviews - raising an eyebrow every time I moved toward the door, checking to see if it was a queue that we were going to go downstairs for lunch or out to the yard for a quick walk or, better yet, finish up the day & head downstairs for dinner. No, it really wouldn't help to explain, since Meshu's been gone now for two months. Two months and the pillow is still there. Taken much too early, much too quickly, and we still don't even know what happened. Only six years old & suddenly one day she's sick - nothing strange on the x-rays, nothing strange in the blood work, but two days later and she's gone. We made it through those first horrible weeks - waking up in the mornings aching for everything that wasn't there - all the rituals that were now broken. We laid her to rest by the pond where she loved to chase frogs. We made it through all those pet store commercials over the holidays. We dealt with the toys, the food, the treats. But the pillow. . . where she spent so many hours patiently waiting for me, the pillow that still holds a bit of her smell, somehow, the thought of that not being there when I come in to start my day, it's simply not bearable.

In the 30 month's since. . .

It's been 2 1/2 years since I made the move back to Marshall (obviously, while I like the idea of blogging, i'm not the most proactive blogger out there). And so I say, 30 months later, again, this move was the best decision I've ever made. There is something so powerful, so grounding, in knowing that you are home - home in the most fundamental sense of the word, and this is my home. This is where my heart is in so many ways - my birth family is here, my partner is here, our house is here, and, probably the most grounding, my history is here. Growing up here wasn't easy - although I don't think growing up is easy in general - but there is something to be said about having a richness of history and being able to re-experience that history as an adult, and to be able to share that experience with those that you love. In every storefront on main street, in every hill that melts from its height on the north side of town down to the plains of mansion street, in the sound of the falls at ketchum park and every time blue bleeds into purple on it's way to watery-red at Brooks fountain in the center of town on every hot summer night, there are stories to tell, and there are loved ones to share those stories with. So, yes, this is home.

So, with that said, and knowing that there are lots of other stories I'd love to tell, maybe I'll start posting to this more frequenlty. Or maybe I'll be back in another 30 months.

moving to utopia

18 months ago I packed up my life in Chicago and moved back to a small town in southern-central michigan. Chicago was amazing - it's where I met some of the dearest people I know, where I learned to appreciate a cubs game on a hot afternoon, where I got to experience amazing concerts and theater and food and art and dance, where I started getting comfortable with being gay, where I mourned the much-too-early death of two of my sisters, where I learned about life in corporate america, where I became an adult. But for all the good that Chicago had, I missed the stars, missed the change of seasons (which gets so lost in urban america), missed eating too much cake & ice cream at too many nieces & nephews birthday parties, missed card games with my siblings & sunday meals with family. So for all those reasons, and for others that maybe I'll get to mentioning later, I juggled things with my job, bought a house, packed up the apartment, ate one last dinner at ecce, went for one last run along the lakefront and moved my life back to Marshall, Michigan.