bandofchimeras

[bandofchimeras]

I don’t mean to be old but computer used to just have games. U didnt have to pay for em either but if u wanted u could get a little CD that put the game onto the computer and you could play it forever and ever even if the company that made it went to hell and shit. You didn’t even need the internet or wifi or anything. And it was pretty neat

[bandofchimeras]

[bandofchimeras]

exit ritual

you breathed hot rot, honey rhizome creeping over and about the twilit fog and home of ghosts, holding, wandering - you unraveled skein by skein the pain woven so tight, leaving ends unaccounted for a tangled knot in the wake of clearing what else is there to be said now? our work was finished, at some point, the way most paintings simply stop being painted the way abandoned houses one day were left - couch covers old diaries, coffee pot half brewed - who knows why we leave what we leave behind i've been in forensics too long evaporating dissecting the long dead smelling of formeldahyde and pink preservation

do you ever study insects in amber, wondering how the suffocation went? warm, thick, pulling, pulling limb by limb, you into a pool of gold.

a permanent translucence memorial for a scientist to crack open or a jeweler to polish and put on display.

[bandofchimeras]

Divine from Female Trouble Appears Before You as a Boddhisatva

there is no right way to say this but i need to say it somehow

right now - I can't escape being the villain. when i think from the perspectives of people i am alienated from, when i look at my life through their eyes, i see my selfishness, cynicism, the ways i am closed, not open, the ways i assume or take advantage or neglect to love.

and it has touched on nerve, lit a first lamp to peer down a deep corridor in myself, a dark room, no a whole basement - the foundation of the house! that Vedic parable - I Am That.

We Are That.

Anything you point out or criticize or praise about others might be true for you in a different context, or in some hidden corner of your heart. if you cannot love them or yourself in spite of it, your love begins to corrode.

i don't think you have to forgive, to choose compassion. compassion is not always mercy, not always sparing the blade. sometimes compassion is making a quick cut, or a bullet to the heart.

okay now that you're on a spiritual page with me I'm gonna say it: it has sucked being in liberal and leftist and progressive spaces, really really bad. not because of infighting or whatever, but because of the tacit rejection of core parts of the human condition.

the fascists are us, they are people overtaken by rigid ideas, fear, hatred, rejected dejected angry ghosts, they are parts of the body turned against itsself. they may be unrecognizable but in order to fight them they must be recongized as human, once.

okay so if you can agree to that, you can hear me out when I tell you some people who aren't fascists, are still conservative-minded, frugal, traditionalist, a bit institutional. they are still your neighbors and community members. they shouldn't have to prove themselves tender, or avant-garde, or interesting, or perfect, to be recognized as such.

i can't find many trans friends who are able and willing to come with me home to my family here. They are (rightfully in many cases) scared or wary. One of my old roommates wouldn't even come out of their room to meet my parents when they visited. They were really hurt by that and I tried to explain to them that it is because they're homophobes but they were like "we are decent and would have been polite!" and I do know that is true.

the problem with my parents and many other conservative, paranoid people is that they themselves are emotional children in some way, unable to cope with a taboo or pain: love, or death, or sex, or shitting and butts and fecal matter, or sex in butts, or sickness, or disability, or change.

but so are a lot of people who are on the 'left' - its just that the social mores are different so you have to act down and be cool but the fundamental thing we are all struggling with is vulnerability -

and how can I or anyone else from a conservative background, or who have had experiences that led them to develop rigidity like that, who still feel affinity for traditional concepts, supposed to be vulnerable, if all that is there to meet us on exit from the toxic, controlling communities, is more shame for being unable to be vulnerable?

this applies to men too. i'm not saying its minorities job to comfort majorities or oppressed groups job to fix oppressors. so don't twist my mf words. but really, truly, i have felt more like an alien trying to be part of a supposedly loving community than i did at church. bc at least at church there was a way to find forgiveness. i feel like some people simply want you to change into the perfect expression of political agreement to accept you, i have been this person for years, and its drug me through hell. i do still crave finding people who align in intent and belief with me but more like, we have the same objectives. working with a friend who a lot of people have called a monster and learning to empathize with her as a whole human being, stand up to her out of line behaviors, have grace, receive love and forgiveness and grace from her, has been such a growth experience the last few months. the reason we stuck it out through the conflict was a shared project.

what am i saying here????.

who knows. what if you are the villain or the monster you were raised to be, to some people, still, what if you can't escape it? they will see you from their perspective and there is no amount of explaining that could rectify you in their eyes.

I think I like to be among monsters and those who recognize what they felt to be their profound damage is just another way of existing, and all paths can eventually lead to love.

I am tired of trying to fix myself for approval, no matter who the audience is. I need to be seen and loved fully, with my conservative mores, freak shit, transness, religiosity, all of it. none of us deserve any less, even if the only person we ever find that kind of love from is ourself, or our mothers, or the ocean, or God.

people are not ever throughly likable. even the most likable kind person has a breaking point at which their hunger, pain and fear will get the best of them.

compassion means recognizing the frailty of the human experience, and that includes morality. it is understanding how we become prey to evil and do evil and wrong and torture and become cruel to one another, to weep for it and rage against it and feel it fully.

social exclusion based on morality isn't unique to the right and its not addressing the root problem in the community.

like you don't fix a scene that has a problem with abusers by kicking the abuser and projecting all your unwanted qualities on them, slamming the door and pretending it never happened. the whole scene needs relational reworking to understand why the harmful event happened. who was hurt? what do they need? what gave the abuser power? how do we relate to the abuser, and why did we make excuses for them and ourselves? how can we find forgiveness, or harmony again?

more to say later cuz Im getting sleepy but I need to get these thoughts out.

[bandofchimeras]

“I often see in others a certain amount of fear of [warmth, caring, liking, interest, and respect]. We are afraid that if we let ourselves freely experience these positive feelings toward one another we may be trapped by them. They may lead to demands on us or we may be disappointed in our trust, and these outcomes we fear. So as a reaction we tend to build up a distance between ourselves and others–aloofness”

— Carl Rogers in On Becoming A Person, a therapist’s view of psychotherapy

[bandofchimeras]

the combative autist, the disabled spoonie, and the traditionalist Catholic kid in me are teeming up to counterpoint: while agreeing with the beautiful and life-changing core sentiment of this post (relational autonomy) can we bring up the fact that labels come largely from CONTRACTS? contracts are not BAD. contracts are forms of negotiation and a way to hold one another accountable. they are a social reality for managing resources, and building trust. They can be spiritual, emotional, they can be broken, but there are usually consequences or the reasons for breaking them must supercede the reasons they were formed.

a contract which can have an expiration date but are expected to be honored. having a wife is a contract. a boyfriend. even a friend. when it is mutual and you call someone your best friend and they do the same, you are telling eachother you will continue to be important to eachother until something changes drastically enough to break that bond.

even motherhood is a contract. fatherhood. there are roles and expectations you take on based on your actions, your relationships, and it would be really amazing if we could have more education about how these contracts work so young people don't go getting into them totally unawares. this concept of total autonomy is simply not the whole picture of how the world works.

demons, players, pimps, hookers, entreprenuers, gods, spirits, holy men, elders, kings, presidents, children - any and all of these characters can form a contract with you. you might not even know it. you can really really hurt OR/AND piss any of these characters off by breaking expectations, not upholding your end of the bargain, or you can really hurt or trap yourself in another entity's reality by lacking awareness of contracts.

part of the terror and courage of living autonomously is breaking contracts you never agreed to - nonconsensual contracts are p much the definition of oppression.

what i'm saying is why are we so against labels? if you understand they are a social convenience, a partial reality, and you have the power to break them BUT must deal with the consquences when you do....you're more savvy.

you simply cannot assume good faith from everyone and you also have to respect that agreements and being good on your word, honor, while out of style at the moment in the USA, is still extremely important in other parts of the world. that's the whole point of a label. loving, actions of love, taking care of another human being is HARD WORK. if you were doing whatever you felt like all the time you might not have the endurance to stick it through. to stay til the end. when someone has cancer, or your child has a rare congenital condition that requires a ton of medical care. or your lover contracts AIDS.

love is not just loving feelings and enjoyment, its also loving actions. follow through and care and honoring commitments. watch Angels across America, please. I also simply don't know if I or most people could ever be as nonchalant and unattached as OP idealistically prescribes. kinda feel like Aang from that one episode of ATLA when the monk is showing him the concept of total unattachment and he's like NO BUT KATARA and nopes out of the entire spiritual training course.

and yes I would love to hear from OP or other proponents of relationship anarchy about this point. bc I don't think our positions are opposed so much as counterpoints of the human experience of love. but I also grew up being told everytime I sinned I made the cross sink heavier into Jesus' shoulder so, open to lightening my perspective.

I do wish people would remember we still live in a world with martyrs. (look to Gaza).

Notes on: radical aloneness

Last fall, I presented a paper on relationship anarchy. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term (or concept), it can loosely be understood as a style of interpersonal relationships that doesn’t prioritize or hierarchialize relationships with others based on what takes place within them, at least a priori. In short, there’s a uniqueness to each relationship which makes their translation between relationships difficult to gather––a kind of ineffability that gets lost or violated in the transition. So, for example, you may relate with someone in a way that tends to be more like friendship: perhaps you sometimes get together for coffee, talk about things that are going on with your life, go for walks, make dinner together sometimes, etc––but, sometimes you mess around, not too often, but sometimes. Then, you may have another relationship that is a bit more weighty––for one reason or another it’s got a trajectory that shoots out into the future, a place where you may see yourself growing vegetables and living together, sharing projects, intertwining intricately. And then, just to have more than two examples, you may have a friend that is more traditionally just a friend: you watch hockey together, talk about books you’ve been reading, get a drink, whatever. There’s a complex calculus taking place in all of these relationships, a shifting definition, murky waters, not only interrelationship but intrarelationship, as well––just because you fucked around last time doesn’t mean it’ll definitely happen this time, just because you didn’t hold one another last time doesn’t mean you won’t this time, etc. 

The point being is that, out of the gate, you can’t prioritize based on the activities that go on within the relationship––the only thing that can be said is that the relationships differ. Now, in lived experience, you may want to spend more time with the person who you see yourself growing vegetables with (this is one of the miserable aporias of existence: love seems infinite, but time isn’t…) but this isn’t because you have sex or because you don’t have sex, it isn’t because they’re “more than a friend” or whatever coarse terminology is hoisted upon it––it’s because that’s the way that relationship goes, its particular mode––you require more time with them for one reason or another: they ignite you, they unravel you beautifully, they support you unflinchingly, they catalyze splendid complexity and nuance. After I presented this paper, I spent some time with one of my former professors, a vibrant and shimmering man with a long philosophical history, but more importantly an insatiable thirst for life, gaiety, and joy––his continuing project being resolutely existential and affirmative. As we rode the bus late at night, he said to me something to the effect of: I absolutely loved your paper, why would we ever want people to be with us who don’t want to be with us? Why would we ever want to exercise power and control over loved ones, for that negates or corrodes love, rots it constitutionally. And then, in passing, right before I got on the bus I was transferring to without him, he said something to the effect of: what you need to be able to do relationship anarchy well is an incredible amount of radical aloneness. At the time, this comment slid right off me, it didn’t stick for an instant longer than hearing it and offering a surface response without thinking, “Yeah, you’re right, I think.” What does radical aloneness mean, anyway. To me, it’s some sort of commitment to your shit, what you’ve got going on, a wellness and health that supports engagements with others, comes to the rescue when you want to lash out and heave at others, take people down because of your own insecurities. One who has cultivated an abundant radical aloneness can let the other be because they’ve got their own projects and projections, their own vital flow. If the one they love wants to be with others for whatever reason, they can be upset and bothered, even jealous of course, but on the whole everything is okay, for they are fecundity. You only know you haven’t cultivated radical aloneness when it’s too late, when you need it, unfortunately. Radical aloneness shouldn’t be equated with the singular or the individual either––sometimes radical aloneness means that you have fostered relationships with others that support you and supplement you. Other times radical aloneness means being actually alone, but alone is of course always populated by others as well, even if you’re alone in space at a given time. Events of late have lead to reflect upon the ways that I create, sustain, and tend to my sense of radical aloneness. I think that, in other circles, this would be taken up as self-care, but this is unfortunate, I think. Radical aloneness can encompass what is broadly construed as self-care, sure, but sometimes radical aloneness means fleeing the self, evacuating the self’s rigid postures and habits, and setting out on unforeseen trails––instead of watching over the self, dismantling the self, letting the light shine in, opening up a window, cracking things up a bit. Maybe I’m being too fine with distinctions, but I think there’s a difference. Beyond that, I think that radical aloneness is the wellspring of being with others confidently and creatively: it is from this shimmering becoming that we can glow with others, connect with others in productive and dazzling ways. Radical aloneness as generative and combinatorial, experimental and stochastic, seeking to build and proliferate. Sometimes self-care is necessary to do this: sometimes you just need someone to make you an avocado sandwich, but an avocado sandwich isn’t going to propel you into radiance, just get you into the position where you can once again have the opportunity to luxuriate. Maybe in subsequent posts I can explore the ways in which I cultivate this radical aloneness, or perhaps the times when it would have been immensely useful to have access to. 

[bandofchimeras]

Can you hear us? Can you feel what we’re going through? Fear. Hunger. Death. A never-ending siege. The silence of the world hurts as much as the bombs.

We're crying out to your humanity—please don't look away. Speak about us. Stand with us. We're not okay. We're trying to survive.

This is not a nightmare. It's our reality.

Don't forget us. Do something—anything. Share. Donate. Repost. Help keep us alive.

>> Our campaign is vetted by gazavetters list at (#291) Momen & his family

[bandofchimeras]

[bandofchimeras]

all cats should be glow in the dark so they can't sneak up on critters in the dark

honestly even the highest concept sci-fi seems tame once you learn BioSteel™ Goats exist irl

[bandofchimeras]

Anonymous, Lesbian Ethics, Volume 3 No. 3, (1989), Guerilla Feminism

[bandofchimeras]

Have compassion for yourself!!! I cannot say that enough. You are human. You are imperfect. You’ve been wrong in speech and action. You’ve made mistakes and you will make more! But you are still worthy of empathy, understanding, and love. You deserve this and I understand self compassion can be hard, but it is a practice to work at. We deserve that within ourselves. 

[bandofchimeras]

Hello my friend,

I am Ahmed from Gaza, a father of a little girl. Our family has suffered greatly because of the war, as we lost our entire home, and found ourselves homeless.

This ordeal has made us in dire need of your generous support to be able to get out of this difficult situation and rebuild our lives again.

Every help, no matter how small, can make a huge difference to us, and restore hope to my little girl and to all of us.

https://gofund.me/665fbb6c

Verified by bees and watermelons , Gazavetter and Bilal Saleh

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your generosity and kindness.

[bandofchimeras]

cw SA talk and sex work

i also tried sex work. as it turns out chronic illness & cPTSD makes that profession as difficult as any other.

i also feel like there has got to be a word for "super sensual and horny and enjoys sex but absolutely zero interest in or skill for indulging all the weird narratives around it and/or dirty talk"

maybe "regular person"

don't get me wrong i love kink but its kind of nice when kink and sex are separate services and sex gets to be sweet and emotional and you don't have to do or be anything other than an animal following its urges and cravings. it can be a little silly and fun or you can cry. whatever! and then for all the weird psychological freak shit you negotiate a scene.

see, johns say a lot of shit when they're in the middle of fucking you that is like, oh, okay. i see. you actually are horny for the idea of owning and breeding people you perceive as more vulnerable than you like, in real life, and you do want me in a cage at your beck and call and you do not understand the border between fantasy and reality. not to mention my consent actually does not matter for you except as a precept you must follow to protect yourself from allegations....you are very damaged people and i do not know if pity, disgust, or despair is the appropriate response bc compassion for you, as the subject of your dominance fantasies, is gonna get me GOT.

i thought i would enjoy the work bc i like fucking and being compassionate and healing touch. like genuinely i wish sex work was respected as part of the healing arts more, sure its part of the entertainment and service industry, but the part that appeals to me is like, taking care of disabled, lonely, or busy clients who have money but lack in human connection. I like when they acknowledge their actual situation, and respect your work. its incredibly rare. cuz a lot of men are simply NOT self aware. they think that ownership and control will make it all better by indulging their patriarchal ego fantasies.

honey i am here to help you reconcile with vulnerability.

i guess that is not an attitude that many girls take in the industry. especially on reddit there was a lot of like "your job is to make the client feel good, stop whining" and while it is true that you are being paid a lot and should actually provide a service you can take pride in, to me that comes across as the general dehumanization of capitalism. worker's feelings and needs should matter, and any service oriented job only feels dignified when the customer has an understanding the service provider is performing a Temporary Arrangement for Financial Exchange, not some permanent statement about their worth as human beings. lmao.

anyways I am taking a break for it from a bit cuz shit is kinda dangerous right now.

[bandofchimeras]

Divorce seems to radicalize american men in a way that needs to be studied

[bandofchimeras]

Come back, I have to tell you the plot of a fic I’ll never write and get you excited about it so we can all be disappointed with me later

[bandofchimeras]

sometimes I worry that I don't know how to love. then I go out to an open field or forest or to the seaside and my heart remembers how to rejoice, it dances at the very sight of the land and feels no fear. are there things in here that could hurt me? spiders, brambles snakes, breakers crashing on the rocks? yes, but I love the place all the same. it's beauty cancels out any fear. and I learn to make a comfortable spot, nestle in, and listen, to play or brood or rest.

my spirit has been broken and crushed by humans, or rather by the weight of my own expectations and desires falling flat into the chasm between what we are to each other and what we could be.

but someday I believe I will find people to love like the land, people whose storms I can weather, whose fruits are abundant - but even the spidery, brambley, desert places, once you know them, are so lovable. I didn't want to live in constant danger or without water, so I left them, but love is a thing you can carry forever. perhaps the only thing there is.

[bandofchimeras]

trans day of (in) visibility

hi i am not necessarily 'back' but i did really miss tumblr, the art and humor and silly fun things. personal heartbreak and needing a break aside, i feel like watching Gazans beg for their lives and support while we have silly fun soured this space for me sort of irreversably. it has soured the entirely internet, my everyday life, and even the concept of working an ordinary job.

i am not "okay" every day i am full of rage and grief and fear at what is being let happen. however the days that scare me most are where i stop feeling those things and gain a sense of normalcy back - its like relief mixed with disgust, and shame, and yes, yes I live with pretty extreme moral OCD. yes it comes from religious/spiritual abuse.

but i have begun to understand it as an attempt to overcompensate for lack of scruples in the world at large as well. it doesn't work and it prevents me from living but

there just are no answers right now. the best thing i can think to do is be open about this experience and try to get back into my creative process, which at the moment is blocked by a howling tornado of grief. maybe letting the tornado have its way, is the healing.

i don't know. but that's the update. nothing has changed in my life except i am a little wiser, getting into Real Actual Foundational Issues with my therapist and more seriously respect the death trap we are all in, and the importance of love and spiritual grounding to get through.

much love.