After a solid two years in the city of Providence, there are finally a couple places outside of my home where I’ve found I can go and effortlessly feel free to be myself. White Electric Coffee is a cafe I often go to write. They’ve got great bagels and decent coffee. The people who work there are lovely, the customers are diverse in terms of age, race, gender, and queerness. In the tradition of coffee houses, the mood is political and communal. There are theater seats in a corner. In short, all I need in order to think and feel comfortable in the world around me.
The herbal shop that I intern at, The Farmacy, is also an accepting and inspiring space to be. Their shop is full of bulk herbs, tinctures, salves, teas, and various medicinal elixirs I help stock the shelves with and make on my day there. There are stacks of books to refer to, and a wealth of wisdom from the herbalists, as well as customers themselves. Each time I go in I learn new things. I appreciate the opportunity to work there very much.
This Summer I’ve been contemplating the condition of my heart. I’ve been acting the recluse for a while now—since I’ve been in this city at least. I haven’t taken the time to hunker down and find ground or community. I didn’t have a car for most of my time here which made it easy not to go out. I can order in tailored sensual encounters on Grindr or Fetlife or through any number of apps. In contemporary civilization people don’t have to effort much in order to be less alone. Despite the proximity and ease of social opportunity, I still feel quite alone though.
For the most part, I’m ok with that. Regular companions are fun, but they’re also stressful when goals for a shared home life aren’t aligned (and I’ve yet to find many people whose idea of interdependence matches my own). I feel the pull of expectation from others’ on me when I’m sharing space, yet most days I need wide open spaces to cultivate inspiration and hunker selfishly into my work. I love rising to the occasion of a friend when they’ve negotiated a spot in my calendar. I don’t mean to come off as cold or inflexible. My heart may be more guarded than it ultimately needs to be. But it’s where I am.
I appreciate observing this internal struggle of mine, and exploring my feelings without self-judgement or shame. It’s refreshing not to worry there’s something wrong with me as I feel the dissonance between where I am and where I believe I want to be. I don’t want to interact with the world “passing”, as I’ve felt I had to in the past. Existing that way encompassed a lot of self-repression and took the form of deep unhappiness. Trying to find myself in the midst of public spaces, and incessantly working with stressful deadlines wasn’t healthy. And maybe, just maybe, life doesn’t have to be so extreme, so all or nothing.
I live with a lot of fear, as do many. When I started taking testosterone and it became clear I wasn’t going to pass as either/or as far as the gender binary was concerned, it took a long time to go out on the town and not worry about being judged and unsafe for my appearance. I felt the need to go out with friends, but didn’t really know many people around here to go out with. It’s hard to do the work of change. It’s discombobulating and distorting, and often it’s a longer trust fall than you thought it might be. The old position may have been uncomfortable, but at least I was already used to the geography of discomfort it asked of me.
I believe in more. I believe in the possibility of yes. Suffering against self is not representative of the abundance we have on Earth.
I want to create joyful, useful, meditative, comforting, inspiring, opportune spaces where people can do the work of shifting, of growth, and of recalibration. We all deserve to better know ourselves in this one life we have to live. Who you are, how you desire to be talked to, or treated by others is less actualize-able in a society that doesn’t allow freedom to define oneself on personal terms rather than through pre-established generalities. Think about how much easier it would be to live in a society where others didn’t second guess our names, try to control our pronouns, immediately judge one’s choice of clothing, or limit self-expression so violently. I want to represent and work to cultivate that society.
Let me be your day off, your environment of ease, your science lab, your craft room, your kitchen, your holy space. I owe it to the places, the people, and the organizations who have given these things to me. I want to welcome others into respectful and responsible spaces of my making, environments which effort to make everyone in them happy. Places to connect and learn from others about what happy can even look like—all sorts of different ways.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
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