Split Vision

November 29, 2018 by

My character, “Amanda”. Photo by Audrey Hotchkiss

I have a problem with love. I don’t love myself as wholly as I love others. This makes me a good person perhaps, but also a monster.

The soft circles I’m made up of fight to be more angular, and lose unless the pressure of hurt, pain, something to be struggled against which is larger than me is applied, something to be reckoned with. My brain sees its fears in every reflection. These ocular chambers cannot be trusted, will not be denied myopic resolve, nor be trained to react differently to the light.

###

When I am working on a farm my body shines and glows, taking on sinewy shape and golden bronze tone. My back muscles seize. I am damaged and incorrectly proportioned for this labor. Old injuries surface and stop me in my tracks, but my fingers, delving into rich brown life are in love. My brain is terse that I’m not jotting the musings of each moment down (hands filled with hoe and weeds), but my heart speaks the language of plants and sighs sweetly.

When I spend days and weeks writing, out of body, sitting stagnant in a chair that must reek of me by day’s end, my heart is satisfied that it has spoken. My brain gives itself high fives and winds down with comforting, less exhaustive endeavors. My body, left behind stiff and unused but for fingertips, aches and grows less responsive, ornery, sullen, and complaining.

When I work in an office I fight with people. Bare teeth. Rue the day I was born on this planet of unremarkable moments, and wish the insidious poison I taste in my mouth from biting my lip wasn’t blood, but strychnine. I learn a different truth: I have no tolerance.

So are the well worn rounds of my desire, pride, depression, and shame broken down by occupation. Am I a body person, a heart person, or a head person? It’s about gender and it’s not about gender. It’s about my search for truth when there’s no truth to be found.

###

He raised me to the hospital’s bright florescent nova and did not proclaim my life a journey for me to discover. Instead my vulva, fresh from the womb of my Mother was labelled “specimen No. 1” and I was degraded for the first time in my blinking moment of an existence. Degraded not because I was assigned “girl”, and to be “Woman” one day, degraded because I was proclaimed fractured, un-whole, because I was set upon a path of lists and checkboxes (illustrated with many points of power and mystery, but still), proclaimed belonging to a path that was not my own.

No path of lists and checkboxes is holy.

Discovery of my body henceforth was defined by predetermined conditions printed in millions of books, on billboards, and writ loudly on boxes at the breakfast table. Instructions dripped from the lips of all who spoke my name. Expectations and projected pitfalls were branded into the minds of every human I met on this bit of spinning rock we call home. I was promised to another in that moment. I was told to rut deeper in the furrow of advertised femininity, chained to a sex and a story brought on by the glance of a man who had cut my Mother against her will minutes before. He had flashed his knife blade, slicing it through her pelvic floor to bring me out at a pace which pleased his pressing schedule and desire to sew a straighter line. His comfortable manly rut. All the rage in 1978. Have we changed?

###

I remember little hearts springing from my eyes the first time I saw a spiked mohawk and rivets, piercings, and tattoos screaming, “I AM ME! FUCK YOUR LISTS AND EXPECTATIONS!” Still, it took me years and shored up courage to shave my own hair from its scalp. I learned the starkness of nowhere to hide from my newly unframed face. No shield by way of lengthy bangs and curtains of hair. Each expression, every fleeting thought and emotion laid naked in the open, recognizable and bare. I was undateable except for the boy with blue hair and tan skin who also loved mischief and disposing of lists.

Acting school isn’t a place to challenge beauty standards, only emotional norms. Our range should be invisible but for the tremble of a lip, a single tear, staunchly empowered vocals, and the lyrics of our limbs. Pretty at first glance always. No “risk” of individual expression will be tolerated in this industry of uncreative creatives. To be popular with casting agents, director’s couches, and audiences painted with an expectation of status quo was our aim.

The week I graduated I pierced my eyebrow, threading spikes and arrows through that fresh hole in my face. I reclaimed the bit of flesh above my right eye in an act of defiance, satiating a starved desire to be myself first, and the “neutral” instrument of a bourgeois patriarchal entertainment industry no longer.

###

I am neither nor. I am both and all.
I am whole.
I am whole.
I am whole.

I whisper to myself in throes of depression and anxiety. I try to convince myself of worth, but when will I be paid a living wage for the labor of gathering “likes” while helping others see beauty where no one else cares to nurture or hold? I admire others far more than I enjoy myself, but I am stubborn and selfish and I journey on.

I like the way I feel until I don’t. I love the way I create until I tear my work apart. The cycle of brilliance and demolition is a rut I am lost deep within time and time again… Raised to the artificial light I was ticked off “female”. Lesser than. Nurturer. Worth/less without a mask of make-up and willingness to wear heels five days a week. I resent this lie which is absolutely not a lie. I plod too modestly along.

I am overqualified, under-qualified, and angry about the paths which may lead me out of debt and constant struggle, and I have no tolerance for them at all. I do not accept social graces as other than the controlling violence I know them to be.

###

A girl, size zero, ate half her yogurt cup in acting class and cried that she was overweight and we attended her, talked it out, held her pain and soothed her edges. I was terrified to exist in the room that day, so many sizes larger than a zero myself, having a body with substance and strength. I cried in anger and angst about the hell this lifetime is. There would be no return to acting class innocence, knowing others’ perceptions of me must be monstrous indeed. I would never be flat enough, tall enough, straight enough, whatever it was I needed to be enough of to work my way out of debt in this, my beloved industry.

###

I do not wish I was less educated, I wish I was less poor. I do not wish I was built differently, I wish the world celebrated humans with bodies. Everything hurts. I am a toothfull thing, dark and mushy in the light, and I do not know how else to be. I am writer and an artist, truth-teller with no fact-check available for my version of truth. I am sensitive and sad. I am at moments wildly excited and hopeful, as only a creative knowing the uplifting fervor of might-be-attainable dreaming will be. I am flawed (oh so flawed) but my flaws are not measured by diamond commercials and lipstick shades, in skirt sizes and shaving cream standards of shame. My flaws are wrapped up in the fact that I have a problem with love. I don’t love myself as wholly as I love others. This makes me a good person perhaps, but also a monster.

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

This writing takes time, research, and consideration. It is my art.
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Meandering to the Edges

February 27, 2018 by

Photo by Jonathan Beckley

There is something calling to me out of the corner of my vision. I’ve been trying to catch it, chasing the blur year after year. I’ve captured a handful of righteous moments, fleeting focus of the thing. Imbalance urges me on, falling forward. Never quite catching up. Trying.

There is a version of me bought into by masses. A mask represented in photographs I never signed a waiver for, the charged feeling of a theatrically lit room as I pass through. Focus and melting. Hot breath, titter of seductive dis-ease… This mask is not a picture of me and my cat at home cuddling, depressed, in a puddle catatonic, working to find the worth of my own mind; fearful I’ve lost it. I appear to the outside world as strong I’ve been told. Resilient. Powerful. Handsome. Magnetic. Honest… and I am, inside, just like you. Yet, it is those particular public moments and the stage which are remembered en masse. The moments I have saved up enough energy for the sentence I have to say, and I ignite in the colors of this mask to be remembered. I upstage myself, become mask for a moment. It is of my heart and making, it is not my everyday.

Gossip seeps into the bones, and I avoid it like the poison which kills healthy weeds. Stirred-up half wishes pinned to a board like bugs, sacrificial spell fodder for someone’s experience of envy, dissonance, disagreement, or discomfort. Standing in full icon there is no third dimension into which one can breathe or be recognized as complex, mistakes wrapped in caring, or bumbling human truth. The comments list for miles, iterating “yes/no” forever. Words cease to mean, broken by the binary language of not listening. It doesn’t change things that one stands up to circumstance and takes responsibility, or holds boundaries. It matters that a mask is damaged by someone with emotions who wants to deface, and masks are visible against the crowd.

Our modern commitment to the hunt.

With more modes of communication at our fingertips than ever before, these should be learning days. The sting of hurt can be tempered, worked, and processed until it cracks away upon cooling. We can become resilience and strong beauty, knowing more than we did yesterday. The responsibility and the privilege of our age is in learning. It could be forgiveness too, complex understanding. Today’s emotions are so easily typed into lynch mob campaigns, and these mobs find no remorse at the end of the day, as no corpse but the one imagined has been left swinging. Except a real mind and body hidden behind binary is skewered still. At home barely breathing. We do not stare at blood in the dirt and wonder about our own veins’ worth, only how to spin a moment of temper in someone else’s direction.

It feels to me as though this “civilization” is looking for a magical cure. We seem sure it’s in the pantry and involves ACV, garlic, mushrooms, and a dash of advice from the talking heads on TV. Maybe it’s in the purse of a stranger, that degree being paid back after so many years, or is it in the books on one’s bedside table, the articles building up in bookmark bars, lunch with superficially supportive friends, workaholism lashed back at in too much willful fun? Is it in the fiery stars spelling out a powerless fate, the number of likes we maintain, or the awards an artist takes? Is it in the silent agreements we fulfill: not talking shit at the table, smiling tersely when an off color joke is made, not ever asking for enough, never giving too easily? This thing we call civilization is anemic and it is anything but civil. Teeth bared, weapons pointed, the temptation to prick is unchecked in most households, schools, police departments, statehouses, or by sanctimonious holy. I can’t make sense of it for the vitriol.

I know what it is like to walk, bare feet on dirt, toes muddied and toughened by minerals in the soil. I know what it is to be scraped up and smell of pine, to hear the chatter of a hundred bugs rise and fall with the passing of clouds, the smell of wind bringing the corners of my country to me. I feel my body degrade year by year into the comfort of a couch, a regular relationship, the ease of a few dollars saved up now and again. To pull myself out of fester isn’t comfortable or easy… so I degrade. Start again.

I know what it is like to sound rolling echoes of an orgasm so loud my lover’s roommate moves away. My body is mine and I have a right to it. Your body is yours and you have rights too. Where we intersect there is passion and fear, anger, inspiration, nerves, opinion, getting by, sorrow, annoyance, compassion, love, and desperation… It is common to rewrite history every day based off the ideals we want to feel, traps we long to escape, emotions we want to pass instead of square off and face. Perspective is ever changing as we grow, yet the breeze from politicians, ad execs, and holy men would have you believe it a fundamental crime to touch your own body with love. What evolution is that?! How can we look at each other with love, reach out to touch tenderly, nourish from the richness of connection human beings opportune, if we cannot feel righteous doing pleasure onto ourselves first?

Play On My Friends,
~ Creature

Please support my work on Patreon. For one time donations click here: Support the Artist 
~Thank you.

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National Abortion Coming Out Day

January 22, 2017 by

I finally figured out what lipstick is for. Photo by Karin Webb

One of the things that contributes to healthy BDSM and Kink is the clear understanding that we own ourselves regardless of what is going on. This primary acknowledgement is what allows us to give control over to others and to take responsibility for our actions. We can consent to being used and to use, to find limits, experiment, and celebrate our flesh and our fantasies together. Without first owning ourselves, we can not give or take back freely and safely; we end up looking to another for permission or to know what is right. It is important and radical to know yourself, to own yourself, to fight for that one thing you were born with: your body. Today I write about a topic I feel deeply about:

HAPPY 44th ANNIVERSARY OF ROE V WADE!!!!! It has been 44 years since the half of the population who can get pregnant has had protected legal access to abortion and to the choice of how to govern their own bodies in the United States of America. Safe and accessible abortion is not, though, easy for much of our population to get to, afford, or feel safe accessing, and every day groups work to take this medical privilege away. In honor of choice and bodily autonomy being preserved, respected, and improved, I move to name today January 22: “National Abortion Coming Out Day”. The idea has been on my mind for a very long time, and I think this is the year that I can no longer put my thoughts off until tomorrow. Today is the day.

National Abortion Coming Out Day is about creating space for people who have had abortions, who have had partners who have had abortions, people who’ve supported someone getting an abortion, or who love and care for people who have had abortions to openly speak their truths. Open discourse about this topic has been suppressed and controlled through fear, violence, abuse, and an ensuing silent void. Take a moment and think about your history with abortion. How has it impacted your life? How has it impacted the lives of people you care for? How does the issue of abortion impact the lives of people less privileged than yourself? What questions do you have about abortion?

Share something about what you find with your community. Be willing and open to have conversations about what it means to own your body and your life. If you want to connect to a community with resources and support, check out the 3 in 1 Campaign, they’re great!

People have been having abortions, inducing miscarriages, and controlling their fertility since the beginning of knowing how to do it. You are not alone or unloved for choosing what to do with your body or your life. If you choose to carry a pregnancy to term, good for you! If you choose to terminate your pregnancy for any reason, congratulations on taking care of yourself, and good for you too! Our options stand on the shoulders of the fertile people and those helping them who have come before us, for thousands of years in study, wisdom, and developing practice. Medical people, Midwives, Doulas, Shamans, Witches, Doctors, Nurses, Veterinarians, Herbalists, Massage Therapists, Acupuncturists, even neighbors, lay people, and activists have had a hand in making abortion accessible and safe.

I had an abortion when I was 17, and I’m really glad I had access to it. I was supported emotionally, materially, familially; and I had the help of a partner with a car, and time to schedule it and heal before getting back to my high school classes. My life would be very different if I had a 21 year old right now, and that’s not the life I chose for myself. I don’t regret having that abortion one tiny little bit, I am grateful for it. It was safely performed in a hospital in Bangor, ME, and I was lucky that there were no complications. Since that time I’ve taken Plan B a couple times when condoms broke and the timing was bad, and I educate myself about aborcienifant herbs, tinctures, my fertility cycle, and natural methods of inducing miscarriage or starting a sluggish menstrual flow. There have been times I’ve taken herbs to jumpstart a late period when I was worried pregnancy was a possibility. I don’t have sex with people who are anti-abortion and anti-bodily-sovereignty. I have a right to my body and my bodily functions. So do we all.

Handsome devil with a uterus at your service… Photo by Karin Webb

So why are you sporting a mustache and binding in the photographs?

  • Shapeshifting to understand myself more deeply is a part of who I am as an individual and as an artist. I perform drag (across many gender constructs); I have since I wrote my first monologue at age 11. I enjoy binding in my daily life and wearing facial hair sometimes. Those are two ways I express myself.
  • I am gender fluid identified and use a few gender labels to explain my identity.
  • I think assumptions about gender in conversations about healthcare further alienate and put in danger people who aren’t men or women. Transmen, Intersex individuals, and people who don’t identify as women get to make choices about their fertility too.
  • I can’t post a photo of my breasts on most social media sites, so binding fits — there are only so many times you can grab yourself on camera to avoid areola exposure and not get bored with the results. It’s also an opportune moment to point out sex-based discrimination.
  • Culturally when we think of “ownership”, we most often associate the concept with masculinity. How has that affected the historical and present conversations about bodily autonomy when we consider fertility and offspring?
  • I think this photo says something about the entire concept of owning one’s body in our society. I had to break a lot of rules to even conceive of it.

Who gets to own bodies? Historically? Religiously? In relationships? In families? In hospitals? In bed? Over time? In prison? In poverty? Out dancing? In different cultures? In resistance? In public? In art? At school? In dangerous situations? At any moment someone else feels uncomfortable? Under the influence of various substances? At work? Within the constructs of privilege? …

Play On My Friends,
~ Karin

If you like my blog, please check out my Patreon Page and consider supporting me, or just click here: Support the Artist

~Thank you.

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