The dozens of sites that routinely re-post blogs with violence against transgender headlines: Transgender ambulance chasers, trying to get clicks on their stat totals for the day. Are they under the delusion that they are providing some kind of service to trans folk?
I regard such things as mindless detriments to me personally and the rest of the trans world. There is too great preponderance of headlines dominating the trans image in media of us as victims. In fact our own language and appeals too often depict us in that role. Trans people squabble, bicker, attack each other, deride, verbally abuse – where is even the slightest attempt at solidarity or unity? What is wrong with this movement? Someone really needs to clean house in this transgender, transsexual, ‘tranny mess’ of a virtual world.
I’m wont to exclaim:
“I think I’ll talk about death. There isn’t a soul who can respond to me in an authentic way, so perhaps I can scare some of the real shit out of you.”
But I shall not, for that may be construed as rude. “Oh, did I say that out loud?” Out loud and proud, baby. I’m sure if I were in a popular blog collumn, making a comment right now, within three seconds some armchair pseudo-psychiatrist would be throwing out phrases like ‘passive-aggresive’. Charmed with your unctuousness, I’m sure, you glaucous hog-rind. What an incredible grasp of the obvious you have, my dear. And what big teeth! Do you eat your own words often?
I presumed that people who have gone through, or are in transitions between the poles of gender would have more to offer quite honestly. Perhaps I can embarrass, irritate and cajole you in place of my usual more subtle forms of persuasion. Oh well, tra-la-la as they say. Here’s some Death to go with your latte:
Wit
B Street Theatre / Sacramento, CA / January 24-March 7, 2009
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Wit by Margaret Edson is a story about Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., a renowned professor of English has been diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. During the course of her illness Vivian comes to reassess her life and her work with a profundity and humor that are transforming both for her and the audience.
Death Be Not Proud
by John Donne (1572-1631)
DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
Wit – The film directed by Mike Nichols
This film was breathtaking, subtle, intelligent and nearly perfect. Emma Thompson was excruciatingly spectacular in her performance, absolutely sublime. I sought-out “Wit” because she was in it, but was not eager to see such a heavy film, as I usually choose lighter entertainment (I loved her in “Junior”). I feel absolutely blessed to have been seduced into seeing it by Thompson’s reputation and talent. “Wit” is a masterpiece of theater and film-making. I do not cry easily and I sobbed, I don’t know how anyone could not, so be prepared. But the performances were all so perfect that I felt honored to be touched by them. Every medical student, nursing student, pastoral care professional or counselor of any sort should see this film. It is a touching view into the reality of mortality.
THE BOOK
On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
ALAN WATTS
p.32
Ananda Coomaraswamy once said that he would rather die ten years too early than ten minutes too late—too late, and too decrepit or drugged, to seize the opportunity to let oneself go, to “lay me down with a will.” “I pray,” he used to say, “that death will not come and catch me unannihilate”—that is, before I have let go of myself.
This is why G. I. Gurdjieff, that marvellous rascal-sage, wrote in his All and Everything:
“The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ … of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during
the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.”
As we now regard death this reads like a prescription for a nightmare. But the constant awareness of death shows the world to be as flowing and diaphanous as the filmy patterns of blue smoke in the air—that there really is nothing to clutch and no one to clutch it. This is depressing only so long as there remains a notion that there might be some way of fixing it, of putting it off just once more, or hoping that one has, or is, some kind of ego-soul that will survive bodily dissolution. (I am not saying that there is no personal continuity beyond death—only that believing in it keeps us in bondage.)
This is no more saying that we ought not to fear death than I was saying that we ought to be unselfish. Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that “I” and all other “things” now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them—to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed, you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it’s no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over—fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise: you don’t die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are.
All this comes much more easily with the collaboration of friends. When we are children, our other selves, our families, friends, and teachers, do everything possible to confirm us in the illusion of separateness—to help us to be genuine fakes, which is precisely what is meant by “being a real person.” For the person, from the Latin persona, was originally the megaphone-mouthed mask used by actors in the open-air theaters of ancient Greece and Rome, the mask through (per) which the sound (sonus) came. In death we doff the persona, as actors take off their masks and costumes in the green room behind the scenes. And just as their friends come behind the stage to congratulate them on the performance, so one’s own friends should gather at the deathbed to help one out of one’s mortal role, to applaud the show, and, even more, to celebrate with champagne or sacraments (according to taste) the great awakening of death.
Sweet dreams, little ones. B.
