beowabbit | Entries tagged with thoughts

It’s January 6. I live in Quincy, Massachusetts, slightly south of Boston and right in the heart of New England. I just went outside onto my porch in jeans, no shoes, and a T-shirt, and I was entirely comfortable. If I go for a long walk outside today, I think I might put long sleeves on, but a sweater would be overkill.

I’m glad my house is quite a bit above sea level.

[No, this is not filtered. This is the sort of thing I think it’s useful to be open about.]

So as I alluded to earlier, but haven’t talked about in a lot of detail, I’ve been concerned for a while about constant exhaustion, memory and attention problems, and various other concerns. Lately I can add breathing problems (both at night and, more recently, sometimes during the day). A lot of it looks very much like sleep apnea although there are some things that seem inconsistent with that. I talked to my (then-) doctor about that a couple years ago and at the time she was pretty sure I didn’t have sleep apnea, but since then the symptoms have gotten a lot worse. My daily exhaustion is greater and more consistent. It feels a lot like being jet-lagged: I’m outside and it’s a bright and sunny afternoon, but I feel like it’s 3:00am and I should be asleep and in bed and it should be dark. When I came home from work this afternoon (early, since I wasn’t really functional), I opened the door carefully so the cat wouldn’t get out. It’s been a long time since I lived in a house with a cat. Yesterday I got off the T a couple stops early on my way to work. It wasn’t that I thought I was at my stop yet, it was just that the train stopped at the station and that bit of my autopilot that controls what you do when the train stops kicked in before I bothered to think whether this was where I wanted to get off. I’m only 40 (well, 39 for another couple days). I’m not due for this yet.

So I’m really glad that I finally found a doctor who was seeing patients, got things straightened out with the insurance company so I can go see him, and made an appointment for September 12. I really hope this is easily treatable, whatever it is. (If not,

cathijosephine, you may get your chance to feed me my strained peaches during visiting hours at the nursing home sooner than planned. :-)

All of this is on my mind because I just finished writing up my medical history and an overview of my current complaints to send to my new doctor. (I haven’t sent it yet because I want to run the family-medical-history stuff by my mother first.) I don’t angst about this all the time. :-)

All of that said, my life is pretty wonderful. I have lots and lots of good friends, a new lover, some other people who don’t seem to mind smooching me now and then, a good relationship with my fabulous ex, a good albeit long-distance relationship with my other fabulous ex, and a house I love in a town I love and whose mortgage I can even (albeit just barely) afford. And it was a sunny day today.

I have some stuff I’m frightened about, but in many ways I am blessed.

PS — Lest any of you worry that I’m going to keel over tomorrow, these issues have been going on (and slowly getting worse) for years. I’m sure looking forward to my appointment, but this isn’t an acute, sudden thing.

Here are some odd interview questions from

ironrose. (The even ones will be filtered.) ( Interview meme. ) Let me know in a comment if you’d like me to come up with five questions for you. I don’t promise to come up with them in a timely fashion, but I’ll come up with them eventually.

Current Location: at home in Quincy

[I started writing this on my phone on the T last Wednesday, and am just getting around to posting it now, so for purposes of the text below “today” means May 24, 2006.]

I just noticed in my Treo calendar that today is the birthday of my first real girlfriend. (I qualified that with “real” because before her, in high school, there was somebody I went out two or three times, shared tender I love yous with, and pined over for a year or so.)

She was, well, not somebody any of you will be able to imagine me dating. She was raised a fundamentalist conservative, and she was a bit homophobic (in the “uncomfortable around” sense). But when she was involved with me, she was in a questioning phase, unsure of the faith, politics, or values she grew up with, and willing at least to consider those I represented.

( Several more paragraphs. )

Karen, wherever you are, I hope you’re happy and I wish you well. I wouldn’t do it over again, but I don’t regret it a bit.

I just finished reading Jimmy Carter’s latest book, Our Endangered Values, which my mother and stepfather gave me for $WINTERHOLIDAY. What follows is sort of a review of and response to and riff on the book.

( Come sit by my rocking chair, all you young folk, and let Grampaw Beowabbit tell you a story. )

And Grampaw Beowabbit can remember when people were seriously predicting riots if the price of gas hit a dollar a gallon.

I’m back after a BiCamp that was perfect in almost all ways, and have skimmed through some of the recent LJ posts. I had assumed that by the time I got back, almost nobody made homeless by Katrina would still be without at least minimal food, water, and shelter. I guess I was wrong.

It’s always weird coming back to the news after a long time without it. I remember wondering as we drove east on I-90 what big stories would have happened while I was away. I wouldn’t have thought that Rehnquist’s death would be overshadowed by a story I’d actually already heard before I left.

Been a while since I’ve posted anything terribly thoughtful, so I jumped on

scholargipsy’s offer to ask me questions. Then, of course, I had a lovely but very busy weekend, so I’m just getting to them now.

1. If you had to change your voice so that it sounded like someone else's, whose voice would you choose and why?: ( My answer. )
2. Which do you prefer in fiction? Happy endings, or tragic ones?: ( My answer. )
3. You're a pretty highbrow guy. Tell me one deeply, inarguably stupid comedy movie that reduces you to tears of laughter.: ( My answer. )
4. How are you most like each of your parents?: ( My answer. )
5. Metaphorize yourself as one of the following classic monsters: Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein's monster, the Bride of Frankenstein, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or the Invisible Man. Explain your choice.: ( My answer. )

As is customary with this meme, comment if you’d like me to come up with five questions for you. No promises that I will get to it quickly.

[Warning: While I love my married friends and do not question the choices you’ve made – really and truly I don’t, not even deep down, I don’t think – this post is likely to push buttons for married people, at least married people in most of the US. If you live in Massachusetts and got married recently, the likelihood for psychodrama is less. I don’t want to lose any of my friends, so please try to understand that I’m not attacking you in this post, and not telling you you’ve made a wrong choice.]

I feel crappy, and I’m taking a mental-health day today.

My sister is getting married to her wonderful, sweet partner in early March, in North Carolina, and I’m not going. I feel awful. I love my sister, I think her partner’s wonderful and I can’t think of anything I want more for her than to spend the rest of her life with him, and I want to support her, and I want to do things she really wants me to do. But since her wedding (1) will be legally recognized and (2) will be in a jurisdiction where same-sex couples can’t get married, I’m not going to be there.

( some more detail )

(This all came up with a vengeance because a friend of my sister’s emailed me out of the blue trying to pressure me to go to the wedding. I was too upset to read the whole letter once I realized what it was about; I’m going to try to have some calming tea and relax and read it through and give her the thoughtful reply she deserves. One much smaller thing that bugs me about this situation is that a bunch of people seem to think that I am under a moral obligation to go to this wedding, even though it would be a lie for me. I believe very much in keeping promises (although sometimes I’ve failed), but this is not an obligation I ever assumed, or ever would have assumed, any more than attending Mass or saying my Friday prayers is an obligation I assumed. *Bleah*.)

Everybody should bear in mind that in most ways I’m really happy these days. It’s kind of weird having the intense happiness juxtaposed with intense stress and Big Moral Angst, but the happiness is no less strong for that.

I haven’t turned off comments, but please don’t try to offer me advice, unless it’s about what kind of herbal tea to drink to calm down. (And to anyone who suggests hemlock, I say: *LBPTHFFLBT*! :-) Doesn’t mean you can’t talk about your own similar situations if you want to, or what you would do, as long as it’s about you and not about what you want me to do. And do remember if you were married in a straight-only jurisdiction, or expect to be, that I really and truly do not feel bad about your choice or your spouse or your family. This is not about feeling bad about my sister’s wonderful fiancé or her decision or even really about her wedding, it’s about feeling like I need to tell the truth by my actions.

Current Mood: shaky
Current Music: Beethoven: "Pathétique" sonata

After this past presidential election, it’s easy to get depressed. In the microcosm, it seems like things are going badly, because we notice all the setbacks — and of course, there are some huge setbacks, and they’re real! — and don’t so much notice the steady progress in the background. With that in mind,( here are some examples of things that have gotten better. ) So taking the long view, even on a scale of twenty years or so, it looks to me like things are getting better rather than worse.

I’m listening to a BBC report on the fifteenth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I grew up during the Cold War. I’m not old enough to remember Kennedy declaring himself a jelly donut, or the airlift, but I vaguely remember Nixon and the Vietnam War. (Admittedly, I remember it mostly as something my parents got upset about, but I had that sort of political context for my world.) The Cold War shaped my world. In Vietnam, in the Middle East, in Afghanistan (where US funds supported jehadis like Osama bin Laden), in Central America, regional conflicts were framed in the context of a conflict between superpowers.

I remember the exodus from East Germany, at first through third countries and then directly, as border controls in East Germany dissolved. I remember the excitement and optimism of the falling of the wall itself. And then a few years later, I remember the fall of the Soviet Union, which I followed in the news and also in Usenet posts by an Internet acquaintance of mine whom I’d originally met on alt.sex (that being the sort of place the geeks of a nation newly connected to the Internet were likely to flock to), who would go stand on tanks around the Belyj Dom (the White House, the Russian parliament building) with Boris Yeltsin behind him, and then dash off to work to post about it to Usenet and mailing lists, and then hurry back to the Belyj Dom to face down the Soviet Army again.

(And of course, that makes me think of the Tian An Men demonstrations, which ended so differently.)

In the past fifteen years, I’ve seen the reunification of one Great Power, and the collapse and disintegration of one modern nuclear-armed industrialized superpower: both things that had at one time seemed almost unimaginable. What will the next fifteen years bring?

Current Music: NPR

So, I saw the news articles about the release of memos from (and one presumably from) George W. Bush's commander in the Texas National Guard in 1972 that suggest that he did in fact disobey an order to get a physical and had somebody pushing for lenient treatment for him and to "sugar coat" (according to one memo) reports about him.

( Strange stuff about the memos. )

The short of it is that it looks like they were very amateurish forgeries.

The memos were evidently released by 60 Minutes. I read one allusion to them being released by the White House as well.

( links to more information )

So the question is, who forged these memos and why? They look unflattering to Bush, so it seems unlikely that the Bush campaign or pro-Bush groups planted them. I personally think the Kerry campaign is above that sort of thing, but even if they weren't, I think they would have done a better job (even bearing in mind that stuff like this needs to be done by a very small group of people). It's not like typewriters are hard to come by. So, an independent anti-Bush group maybe? Or should we put our tinfoil hats on and assume the forgery was supposed to be discovered, or that the memos were supposed to distract from something else? (I suppose one much less sinister possibility is that somebody retyped the original memos, but then why would 60 Minutes try to pass them off as photocopies of the originals, and why would some of them have Killian's signature? Did any of you see the actual 60 Minutes piece?)

Anyway, I detect weirdness ahead.

ladytabitha asks, Why is a relationship desirable to you? I.e., why do people want to get into (romantic/sexual) relationships? Particularly diligent students of the common Eastern

beowabbit (B. vulgaris bostoniensis) may wish to read my answer.

Edit: I’ve copied it here for archival purposes, given that

ladytabitha doesn’t use that journal any more.

That’s a fascinating question.

There are lots of different kinds of things I get from other people. Many of them, like a sense of deep connection, sex, and a certain kind of bubbly optimism, are things that I often get from romantic or sexual relationships than from other kinds of relationships. Many of them, like conversation, shared brainstorming, and laughter, I can get in platonic, casual friendships. So there are a lot of elements I want in my life, a lot of different social nutrients I feel I need in order to be a healthy person, and I seek many of them out in relationships with other people.

I’m kind of unusual in that I don’t tend to centralize these quests for various things in one person as much as most people do. That’s part of why I’m not monogamous, and of why the primary–secondary model of relationships doesn’t work as well for me as it does for some people. It’s been a long time, for instance, since I’ve regularly gotten deep romantic love and sex from the same people — not for any particular reason, but because those things are somewhat separable for me and that’s the way it’s worked out. Similarly, in different close friendships or loverships I get to exercise different facets of my personality: some people I love spending time with because I love having intellectual, almost abstract conversations with them; some people I love having warm emotional discussions with; some people I like to Go Out and Do Things with; and some people I just want to hold or be held by.

So there isn’t one reason I seek out relationships (or friendships), but several. I have a lot of things I’m looking for in my life, and no one person is going to provide all of them, but I tend to notice people who either happen to work well with me in a number of ways, or else who are really good at one particular thing that matters to me.

Another thing that’s a bit unusual for me (and sometimes gets me in trouble) is that close friendship and romantic love are very similar for me. There’s a cluster of things I look for in friends, and another cluster I look for in romantic interests or lovers, but the overlap is very large. So for me, the difference between friends and lovers is largely a difference of degree. (At least if you set aside simple sexual attraction, but I’m not convinced sexual attraction isn’t partly affected by the same cluster of personality traits, and I’m also not convinced that it doesn’t have at least some effect on who I form friendships with.) One nice consequence of this is that I almost always stay close friends with exes.

If I had to pick one thing that I look for in relationships, it would be something that I associate as much with my closest friendships as with romantic relationships: a certain sense of intimate connection, of emotional sharing, of uncensored communication, and of trust. It’s something I get in pillow-talk with a lover, but also in conversations with a friend when we’re connecting well.

Coming at this from a more practical perspective, one thing (some) people expect from a long-term capital-R relationship is living together, or at least spending lots of time together. So one reason to get into that sort of relationship is for the practical benefits of seeing somebody almost every day, of being able to get into those sorts of deep conversations while washing dishes or getting ready for work in the morning, of having fairly regular sex (or at least the fairly regular opportunity for sex if you and your partner want it), of having somebody who keeps up with your life just as a part of their day-to-day routine, rather than having to be brought up to date in spurts. And yes, I’d love to live with someone who was both close friend and lover (and/or play partner). But for much of the last decade of my life, until my (platonic) life partners moved to Hawai‘i, I was getting much of that sort of thing from people who weren’t lovers.

I feel like I’ve sort of gone off on a tangent, and I’m not sure I actually addressed the question you were asking, but hey, I like watching myself type. :-)

My friends know I’ve been through a lot of stress the last few years (actually, probably more than most of you knew). But you know, I have a really, really good life, in large ways and in small.

( Why beowabbit, what do you mean? )

Yeah, I like this life. And you, my friends on LJ and in the physical world, are a big part of why.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Afro-Celt Sound System: Saor/Free

I’ve been kind of down since I got back from visiting

pheromone and

Dreaming, despite having a great time with them. There are several clusters of reasons for that. One is discovering that both of them are likely to be spending great swaths of time away from Boston in the next year, rather than coming back “home”. I feel like I’ve just been losing people for years. If my support network is shrinking, why am I still here? Another cluster of reasons is probably envy: they’re both in situations where they feel able to make big changes in their lives, to take up new career and life-fulfilment paths, to take a year to travel, that sort of thing. Sure, I could make those same choices myself, but I feel like I’d have to sacrifice an awful lot. (And a lot of what I’d have to sacrifice would be the connections and friendships I still have, especially in Boston, and that’s something that’s directly opposed to my image of who I am.) A third cluster of reasons is having felt so comfortable at the party with

Dreaming and his friends, and wishing I could go back to that stage in my life (which I guess is where some of the wanderlust comes from). And of course lots of these are connected to loneliness.

Hmmm... I didn’t mean to write so much, or be quite so self-revelatory. I was just going to say “been kind of down since I got back” and leave it at that, but I guess I needed to write. Y’all should not worry about me, though; I’ve felt this way before and I’ll feel this way again, and I’ve felt really good before and I’ll feel really good again, and for the most part I trust the stew-pot of my brain to make good soup eventually. (I originally wrote that I trusted the percolator of my brain to make good coffee eventually, but “percolator” and “good coffee” do not belong in the same sentence, whereas “stew-pot” and “Mmmmmm, brains!” definitely do.) Happy to be asked questions (in person) though if people feel like helping me think through stuff.

Current Mood: busily thoughtful

Stalin is reputed to have said, "People who vote do not matter. People who count votes matter."

Slashdot had a thread today titled "E-voting Patches Skew Election?" (here's a link with lots of comments, and here's a link with just the more highly rated comments). This is a topic I've heard a bit about before, but it's not getting nearly as much press as it needs. Basically, the electronic voting machines being widely introduced around the country (1) are extremely insecure, as reported by security researchers in academia who stumbled across the code, (2) seem to be designed in a way that specifically makes tampering easy to do and hard to detect (as I understand it, votes are stored in two duplicate Microsoft Access databases; all the spot-checking that can be done on-site is done against one of the databases, but the final tally is done against the other database; if any argument has been made for why it's useful to have two separate databases that are supposed to contain the same data, I haven't read it), (3) provide no audit trail, and (4) are manufactured by Diebold, a company with strong Republican ties and whose CEO is a high-level Republican fundraiser. So, it would be easy for the results to be altered, there is no way the public would be able to tell if the results were altered, and the people with access to the machines have some incentive to alter the results.

Maybe we need some election observers from Zimbabwe or Cuba or Azerbaijan to help guarantee a free and fair election in this country.

Current Mood: worried

Executive summary: Got a chance to take a nice road trip (which is something it feels like I never get to do any more), got to reconnect and hang out with

Dreaming and see a bit of Albany, got to meet

Dreaming’s mom and stepdad, who seem like nice people, got to have a nice chat with my stepfather Don on the phone, and had the unexpected delight of spending a little time with

pheromone at Kripalu.

( The full version )

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Babatunde Olatunji, The Beat of My Drum

BiCamp this year went from Thursday night, August 28, through Monday, September 1 — Labour Day, so it was a bit longer than usual.

docorion went up early in Mr Toad (the green diesel Mercedes) on Friday and set up our tents, bless his heart. sionnagh was very uncertain whether she was up for going, but decided at the last minute to go with me. We had a lovely drive, and she read me some Harry Potter in the car (we took the Toyota wagon, which I’m slowly thinking might need to be named after the Water Rat).

Around the time we got to camp, though, she started feeling down, and after not very long decided she didn’t want to stay — for a number of reasons, but among them was the fact that fibromyalgia and somewhat chilly camping don’t mix very well. So docorion drove her down to her mom’s house near Hartford (not all that far from where BiCamp was).

I was kind of down for the first part of camp. Partly that was because sionnagh wasn’t there, and out of concern for her (she was actually having a great time down in Connecticut, but since I had really lousy cell reception I didn’t know that), but also because I was feeling lonely in general, and being around all the couples and triples at BiCamp was reinforcing that. I was in the kind of headspace where I was craving company and social interaction, but was feeling too shaky and disconnected to seek it out. I did have a great time hanging out and catching up with beetiger, a good friend of mine from college whom I hadn’t seen in at least seven years.

Saturday was better. It started with zzbottom and Juzika-Mauserl’s famous blueberry pancakes (with blueberries I’d helped pick that morning when I bummed a ride in to town to replace the contents of my toiletries bag, which had managed to wend its way down to Connecticut with sionnagh). That can’t be bad. And it had cleared and was bright and sunny, and I went down to the clothing-optional swimming hole and had a nice time there, although the water was cold and I didn’t stay long.

Saturday night was the potluck, which was fun, and after that a little celebration with cake for [onemintjulep, who has since gotten a LiveJournal account], who is just finishing his residency and becoming a Real Doctor. It was loads of fun. He’s really good people, and I wish I saw him more often than once or twice a year.

After that, I tried to set up my telescope (on the lovely folding camp table sionnagh had given me for my birthday), but discovered that it was broken. Bummer! So I came and sat around the campfire with [onemintjulep], missdimple, volta, bitty, and a few other people. (I forget whether zzbottom was still up or not.)

Sunday (which arrived after not quite but almost enough sleep) was even better — bright, sunny, and warm. It started with yummy omelettes thanks to volta, and proceeded at the swimming hole. Since it was warmer, I spent more time in the water this time, and also spent a lot of time hanging out with beetiger on the rocks. (She was giving mothra some vitamin D. :-)

On the way back to camp from the swimming hole, I ran into K., a classical and opera composer from NYC, whom I had had quite a lot of fun with at BiCamp 2002, after a few years of us having our eyes on each other but not doing anything about it. She assured me between kisses that we would find some time that weekend to boff like bunnies, and secure in that happy knowledge I returned to camp.

( Too Much Information of an emotional and sexual nature )

It had been fairly warm when we started, but by the time we were ready to leave the tent it had gotten quite cold, and it was a challenge to get out from under the sleeping bag to put our clothes on. But we managed. We wandered back over to a campfire for a bit, and then K. returned to the tent she was sharing with her sweetie A. (also up from New York City). I stayed up for quite a while, enjoying the afterglow and the warmth of the fire and the smell of the smoke and the bright stars and chatting, as people drifted off to bed from the campfire. Around two or so I went to bed myself, leaving bitty and volta as the last two people by the campfire. I later discovered that they stayed up all night talking, not wanting to leave the warmth of the fire.

The next day (Monday) we hung out and had breakfast and a plan arose to go hot tubbing at East Heaven in Northampton. ( Car troubles and diner dinner )

The food at the diner was not so great, but it was a fun time. Then most of us went to East Heaven for tubbing while

docorion went back to Connecticut to pick up

sionnagh.

Tubbing was a truly lovely end to the weekend! East Heaven is a very nice place, and I left feeling delightfully relaxed. volta offered to take Juzika-Mauserl and fallenpegasus back to Boston, since I’d been really looking forward to the long drive alone to relax and reflect on the weekend, and was also mildly concerned about timing and logistics. And as the big group was all saying goodbye, I got a nice kiss from somebody who hadn’t kissed me in quite a while, which was very pleasant and a nice little symbolic cherry on top of the weekend.

The drive back was fine, quiet and relaxing, and I got home feeling wonderful.

A five-question-meme question and answer in a friend’s journal got me wondering about this question (not that it’s not something I’ve wondered about before): Why is it that the dominant, powerful cultures across the world seem to have been very sex-negative, very repressive of sexuality?

(Disclaimer: I’m not a historian or a comparative anthropologist. I know not whereof I speak.)

Sure, there are lots of cultures that have very little sexual guilt and shame. The canonical example is described in Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. But I have the impression that those cultures tend to be small and localized, not the conquering, continent-spanning ones. Christianity and Islam and Confucianism (using those terms as shorthand for the cultures, not to denote the religions themselves) have all been pretty sex-negative for most of their history. I don’t know much about precolonial India, but I know it was more sex-positive than modern India — but the British Empire very successfully imposed a deep prudery on the subcontinent.

Actually, Victorian England is an interesting example. Prostitution was extremely widespread and pretty accepted, and judging by what statistics we can come by, there was overwhelmingly more sex between men and female prostitutes going on than sex between men and their wives. But it all had to be kept just under the surface, with a little bit of tension between what men did and what they talked about in public, driving the engine of sexual shame and guilt and fear. And of course the fact that so much sex was semi-underground had terrible consequences for the spread of disease. I think Victorian society may have been a mirror image of modern American society, where sexual tolerance is on the surface, but there’s a deep vein of sexual guilt and shame just beneath the surface.

So, maybe this is just a coincidence, and a cross section of the Earth’s cultures five hundred years ago or five hundred years from now would show a different picture. But I don’t quite think so. It sort of looks to me like there’s some sort of correlation between sexual repression and geopolitical success. If that’s true, why? What does sexual repression do for cultures that gives them an advantage over their neighbours? Are ascetic people, afraid and ashamed of their inner sexual beings, better warriors than their neighbours who are busy boffing like bunnies? Before modern medicine, was unrestrained sexuality too much of a risk in terms of deaths in childbirth and the spread of disease? (Of course, before contraception lots of mixed-sex intercourse would have equalled lots of babies, but I don’t think that explains all of it, since there are many other ways to express your sexuality, and avoiding something because it has consequences you don’t want is different from avoiding it because you think it’s a source of evil.) Does a sexual economy of artificial scarcity make it easy to use sex as a carrot to control the people? Or just to harness their libidos for other things, as described in 1984? Do people learn self-discipline through repressing their sexualities that makes them more efficient citizens? Or do I have cause and effect reversed, and is it political and military power and geographical spread that leads to sexual repression?

And if any of this is true (and of course none of it may be; I’m making this up as I go along), then why do Europe and North America since WWII seem to be bucking this trend? (There are a lot of reasons I can think of, including greater population density and mobility leading to greater anonymity.) If there is some sort of quasi-evolutionary advantage to sexual repression, what does it mean for western culture that we seem to be getting less repressive — or will that last?

Best essay in response gets rewarded with oral sex. (Or a sparkly sticker. Offer void where punishable by stoning or burning at the stake.) [Beware of the comment length limit, if you really want to write an essay.]

Current Mood: bemused
Current Music: Hanan, “Ya Leyl A’ah”

First of all, I had a lovely time at

pixel's Connecticut Poly retreat this weekend. ( A bit more about the retreat. )

( introductory anecdote )

That's mostly to set the stage for what kind of mood I was in for the next anecdote. I transfered to the orange line, and after a few stops a seat became available, and I sat down next to a young woman (or oldish girl), probably college age but maybe high-school age, wearing eyeliner and fashionable clothing. Three other women about the same age and similarly dressed were across the aisle; the four of them were clearly travelling together. They all had distinct Boston accents.

Because I had a dufflebag between my legs (“...or are you just happy to see me?” ba-dum, ching), my backpack was on my lap rather than on the floor where it usually is.

After a few stations, the woman next to me asked me “What does that say?” It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about: the one button I'd left on my backpack after Boston Pride (cool pix of

xoxjasminexox, and one with a little bit of my foot in it). I read it for her: “Racism, sexism, homophobia: Recognize the connections.” She looked puzzled about it for a while, and the three women across the aisle got amused expressions. There was a pause. Meaning to be disarmingly self-deprecating, I said “It's deep,” but she took me at face value and said “Yeah”, and a moment later, “I'm trying to wrap my brain around it — what's it mean?” I said, “Basically, all those things are about dividing people into groups, and saying, ‘that other group is not like us, we're better than them’. And did you ever notice that it's often the same people doing all three of these things? Oh, but now I'm doing it, saying those other people aren't like us,” and she said “Yeah, stereotypes within stereotypes,” and after a pause, “I don't like all of these,” gesturing at the button and meaning racism, sexism, and homophobia. I had spent some time this afternoon reading Pixel's car, so I had a Wolfman Jack quote to share with her: “Where did bigots get the idea that God is as small-minded as they are?” and she said “Yeah, there are some good ones. I took a poetry class once” and she gave me a quote which unfortunately I've forgotten (although it was one I'd heard before). At that point we'd reached Wellington, where I was going to get on the bus, so I said goodbye and got off. (As I stood up, I realized I had my Poly Boston T-shirt on, with “Expand Your Family” on the back.)

Given the fact that I was preaching to the converted, and I'm not sure who was teaching whom anyway, it wasn't the most high-impact piece of activist outreach I've ever seen, but it gave me a good feeling, and made me think I should start wearing buttons more often.