Vignette 1: Gender Defiant Chaotic Punk

I love the terms gender defiant or gender chaotic. I want to ... I want to completely unsubscribe from gender. I don't like defining my gender with default terms but that's what we have. So, I have a very ... I would like to be as both many parts of gender and also just completely removed from gender. I think, I mean, it took me until I was in ... well, I didn't realize I was Au-ADHD, so autistic and ADHD, until I was in my 50s. And so once I started understanding that I had a differently wired brain than I started ... I mean I think that that's the thing with neurodivergence and gender .... like people who are gender non-conforming is like once you question one piece of the puzzle and then the whole thing is like ... this whole thing is stupid. So, I think really and it was memes honestly. I think diagnosis of neurodivergence by memes. Even clues about transness, like memes and other people's stories. So, I think the project like this is key. Because it's just like we question one thing, we question everything. I would say actually when I discovered punk in 1984 when I was, maybe 1983, actually probably 1983 when I was like 15, I felt like I'd found some residence, it was like the first time things made sense to me, and I think that was because it was very gender nonconforming. It's like the less gendered you were, the more defiant you were. The more people were like, yeah, do it so. And it was the the 80s and 90s there was a lot more .... like I was telling a younger trans friend and I was like, we didn't really use pronouns. We didn't really think about gender, and I was thinking about that it's not true. We actually just said why the fuck is this gendered? And so, the 80s and early 90s, I mean there was like riot girls and there was, you know, _____ magazine and there was all of these ways of disrupting gender, but it wasn't using the language of today. So, looking back, I'm like, oh, I can see why I gravitated towards that stuff without actually understand my own gender.  

MEO: Where were you during the 80s and 90s? 

Southern California. Which is a really sweet punk scene. It was like, very like, people would, like, help each other off the floor if they fell over. And it was like, really cute. And then I went to New York in the early 90s, and people are like kicking each other in the head. I'm like, what is this. It terrible. It's like I hate this. So, I think it was the kindness of the punk scene, and it felt like, I mean, it was like, very much a misfit family. But it was, you know, the first time I'd been around people who had some kind of shared reality with. 

Vignette 2: ADHD

I think I had neurodivergent friends who were like, just kind of like subtly sending me stuff and being like, "uh, you might want to consider." There's a lot of, like, ADHD and mental health meme accounts. There's so many of them. And a lot of them are, like, Twitter screenshots or whatever. It's like, you know, a lot of just reposts. But I remember one that said, "If you have a bunch of friends that have ADHD, I have news for you" or something ... it's a little longer than that. But I kind of looked at that when I was like, "oh, yeah, all my friends are a little strange." So it gave me a clue. Strange being good.

Vignette 3: Bubblings of Gender

That point when you were living in Hollywood and had your probably the first connection with trans women. Excuse me, do you remember bubblings ... You talked about the very defined binary, but bubblings of gender for you at that moment? 

I was just, I think it's the autism that I didn't know about. Where it's like there's rules for things. And so, there's this set of women like, they were all like in Madonna Lucky Star gear. Like, the little dayglo lingerie and stuff. I actually had a downstairs neighbor named Bunny, who had severe polio as a child. And was a sex worker and always had these, like, young hot dudes reading to her. She was like, so inspiring and so just just, you know, very creative. Very out there. The next time I saw her after I left Hollywood was in a Joel Peter Witkin photograph, which is a famous photographer who does really beautiful photographs of non-normative bodies. I was like "Oh my god, it's Bunny," but she was called Angel in those pictures. And she was also like the star of an early YouTube viral video where she's wearing a white sun dress and dancing with an umbrella. And just, probably within the last decade, she died and was eulogized in the New York Times, at 66. She had, like, made this career and she had a very non normative body. And she was just like, going for it. So, it was really beautiful to see this, this trans woman that I had met in the 80s like, just keep doing these creative projects. I mean, I think because I was raised by an autistic farmer who was literally never home, I never got any advice. I was pretty feral. So, I just kind of did ... I just didn't really think about it. I was just kind of like doing what I was doing. Yeah, well, my dad kept saying that I was his stunt double son. I was like building cars and furniture when I was probably still in grade school, like using the table saw. I was this little shop helper and so he's like "you're my stunt double son." And when I got older and he got like irritated with the fact that I wasn't being conforming, I'm like you started it dad. 

Vignette 4: Fem Icon

I also got debutante training as a kid because my rich relatives were trying to poach us from my farmer dad. The Chicago Society people. So, I had like kind of like nascent debutant lessons. So, like, I think I was also drawing on that. But fem icon is my aunt who was Aunt Marg, who's a society Dame from Chicago, who grew up in the 40s and like smoked cigarettes. Lucky Strikes in like a tortoise shell extension and was like, "One does not do that, darling." So, when I do fem, it's definitely channeling Aunt Marg. She's just like the best fem icon. She's a badass. She was like a total society Dame, but she was just ... she knew how to like... the last time I saw her, she was in her 70s, living on Pikes Peak in Colorado. She had a manual transmission Jeep. She's living in the giant house because her husband left her for the secretary. So, this big empty house, raising Labradors that are like the size of small cows. And she had broken her right shoulder in the socket and was driving us to dinner down Pikes Peak, in the dark, shifting with her left hand because her right arm was like strapped to her chest. And she was going to Russia in three weeks. She was a badass. So, like, if I'm gonna be fem, it's gonna be Aunt Martha. 

Vignette 5: Gender Transitions

Start with 1985 when I knew the trans women in Hollywood. I read about getting my boobs removed on dear Abby's advice column to fight back pain. And I'm like, without even, like, just intuit ... intuitively, I'm like I'm having that. And so like with a giant mohawk and black eyeliner called a guy in the phone book. And he's like, "You have to be of legal age." So, when I turned 18, went back. I was by myself, in his office, and he was, he said he would do the surgery, but he's like, "you have to leave a little breast tissue. I don't feel comfortable taking it all off, in case you want kids." I'm like, "I don't want kids." And he's like, "I'm not going to do it. I don't feel comfortable if I don't," you know. And people kind of get mad about that story. But I think for the 80s, that was amazing to see this like solo punk kid with the mohawk, who is like, "Take my boobs off." So he did a really beautiful job and I had sort of like, you know, this sort of very gender nonconforming existence. I was like mixing all the ingredients together in different ways. And then as I started aging, like you know, I turned 40. I had that kind of realization, but I started also getting messages like you can't be punk anymore. It's not cute. Nobody's going to love you. I didn't know I was autistic. So I was like, "well, I guess I was raised by my dad and I should learn how to be a girl. I've never learned how to be a girl." So, I like had, like, a makeup consultant. And I had like, you know, I just basically made a checklist in a very autistic way and was like, OK, now I'm gonna. You know. 

MEO: These are all the things that go into girl, yeah. 

These are like, I can wear this kind of jewelry. I can only wear necklaces because I can't stand like all the sensory stuff. I was like, oh, my God, darling, you did not know it all. But so I got really nice implants. Like people thought my boobs were real. So I actually got fairly, you know, noticeable boobs. And then I'm walking around like "I'm a girl. I'm a girl. Am I doing it?" And everybody, including me, was like, "what the fuck?" Like, "this doesn't feel right." Actually, some of my trans friends who met me then, like, kind of towards the end of that period thought I was trans. And I was like, "No. I don't know. I definitely wasn't, I don't know." But it was like very gender confusing for me and a lot of people. And then also perimenopause and menopause was happening. And I had this voice. I realized now that probably my mom's postpartum depression and perimenopause and menopause is probably what amped up the suicide ideations. And then finally the successful suicide. Because I had this voice, it was like "you should just kill yourself." And I was just like, "What?" So it was hormone imbalance. So I went all the way through menopause before I started T, which was fascinating. So 2020, when I was 52, was when I got the implants out and started full dose of testosterone. I mean, especially now that I'm like, oh, "that's such an autistic response, Oh my god." I was so confused and grief filled about it for so long. I was like, "why did I do that to myself?" And I'm like, "It's very autistic, OK." And now I just, it feels just like a part of the story. And I think I told you I left all of my social media photographs of me. It's like I call myself the taxidermy Karen. It's all ... you can go look at it on social media because I think it's part of the story. Like, it's not clean, it's not tidy. 

Vignette 6: Accessibility, Community Building, and Rest

Yeah, and I've done accessibility design for .... in software, and my dad was, had an artificial leg. So, like, there's just been like an accessibility theme through my life, so. My partner last night was like, "what do you actually want?" I'm like, I want a network of people who are committed to working on projects overtime, but also can step back and like, if they have to be in bed for a day, because of their chronic illness or fatigue or whatever. Like, we can, like, trust each other to step in and out. But also we keep the threads going in the ways we can. And so that's I think what I'm trying to build in this part of my life is ... Also learning how to rest. I was not allowed to rest. I'm from a depression era father. And it's like you just keep going. You know, like limbs ripped off. It doesn't matter. You're like, "I gotta keep going." So, I definitely have this like horrible farm Midwest like not knowing when to stop, not knowing when to rest. So, I have people who I've asked to track me. If you see me actually going, especially as I age because my brain is still just like weee and my body is like, no.

Vignette 7: Aging, Learning, and Teaching Skills

Actually, like, as you're talking, I don't know if I've really put it together this clearly before, but I think when one is younger, the projects are one's identity. And as you get older and do multiple projects and have more life experience, it's like, oh, the projects are kind of flex it. Like I just hand people things and I'm like, wow, I wouldn't have done it that way but hey, it's done. Great, cool. I don't know if it's like it's aging. I'm like a little bit like I don't have as much capacity. So I'm just looking for other people to do it for me and they don't do it well, And I'm like, "Ah, it will be fine. I've been through lots of things that have been like, fine. It'll be fine." So I think some of that's just the aging of being like, "it's great." And also watching the joy of like working with people who never were allowed. Like I was saying this last night, like people who are in their 20s and 30s had very severe helicopter parenting or even schools or whatever, like the amount of control put on kids. So, they were like, punished for agency. Like my current partner, if they tried to go cook, their mom would flip out because they might mess up the kitchen. So they never learned how to cook. They had to learn as an adult. So, like, I I just ... I recently realized that, and I'm like, oh if I help some of these folks understand how to take agency and like, use their nascent skills, like it'll just build upon itself. So, it's really a delight to see somebody do something for the first time like, you know, like the drywall thing or whatever. Like I I help people just like get a start. And they're like "oh wow." So, it's really, that also brings me a lot of joy. And it's important, I mean, climate change, fascism, whatever we're going to have to actually be working in the interstitials and like working interdependently and actually do a lot of the stuff ourselves as services start. 

Vignette 8: Learning From and Teaching Others

It was very ambient, like it was like he didn't stop me from doing things. He also just expected me to do things and he didn't explain. I was talking to someone about this the other day. I was like, I could have learned so much more if he explained what was going on. But it was just like he would just do things and tell me what to do, and then I would watch and kind of pick it up. So I kind of think I know how to do stuff. But like sometimes I'm like "OK, I don't know what I'm doing." I have sort of ...

GMT: But in talking to you today and other times, you're so good at ... you want people to have all the information. So it's almost ... It seems like there's this element of you got that from, a piece from your dad, but you want to build on it because you want to provide more foundational information. 

I think it was my user experience design career. So, I ended up ... user experience design is humanizing technology and so I had to, I call it professional great empathy because I had to like, imagine that I was a 66 year old man from Kansas City, Kansas, who is kind of afraid of technology and doesn't want to admit it. But wants to see pictures of the grandkids and has to load this app, right? Like so, I had to like, really emulate all these different people and be like, how would these people go about it and how can I ... Like, I don't believe people should have to learn tech. Like everybody who gets shamed for not understanding technology, I'm like, no, no people who want to learn it, great. But it should not be something that is required. Like it's just foreign. It's our brains, our our somatic systems don't work like that. So, I think like watching people and designing systems for people who are really like actually afraid of breaking the system. Like, I'm very much a Level one teacher, which I think is a skill. To be able to like really break it down and not infantilize people, but also empower people. Like I just taught a young queer person how to drywall. And so I cut a sheet of drywall and show them and then I would hand it to them. So, often like the dad that I ... the way I wanted my dad to be. Like the pieces that I wish that he had given me. But I think it was aging. I don't think it could done that before this sort of third age. 

MEO: Why is that like the? 

I was still so wrapped up in the chaos of my own experience and not understanding myself. And not feeling grounded in myself. So, it was like, really hard. You know, I had these moments like as a team manager, you know, where I could do it. But I think being able to like to unpeel a lot of these ... That's why I'm so resistant to gender definitions, because it just fucked me up for, like, my whole life. The the cultural stories and not seeing myself in any of the cultural stories until, like, probably the last decade. 

Vignette 9: Analog Regional Networks of Resilience

There's .... I have, like, multiple contingency plans. Like a lot of AB diagrams in my head. Some of it is me imagining a map. I did a lot of digital map design work. It almost feels like there's like a model in my head like Minority report, where he's like throwing things back and forth where, like, there's just all this stuff that I'm kind of bringing in and out of focus. But I really do need help. Like I just met another person, you know, at the ReWild Portland board retreat. We were at that restaurant and I met this, like, young queer person who's like a rabbit and quail farmer and wants help butchering. And I want to practice my butchering, and I want rabbit bones. And I'm like, I'm so excited to meet you. And I'm kind of exhausted. There's another person and nod that I have to track now. Not have to, but actually want to. And I'm like, "How is this going to ... I don't have enough time." So, it's really trying to find people who are, like, capable of taking some of these pieces. Like I'm really really just like "Who is going to help me take some of these pieces, because I can't do all of it." There's so ... and I just have these opportunities where I'm like, you know, this idea happens and then all of a sudden this whole web of possibility opens up and I'm like, "oh shit." Yeah, I feel like like things are going to fall off the back of the truck if I don't have a better system. I think this is like .... this comes from like my punk days and like Maximum Rock'n'Roll was the like the industrial national zine. It was a zine, but it was like industrial size and they have scene reports in the back and we would track like fascism or we would track like different things that needed support. Like, there's actually a crew of ... skinheads in England where a working class movement. It's not fascism. And there's a crew of skinheads in Minneapolis who were working on n anti-fascist stuff in Chicago and read about fascism here in Portland. One of them is Mike Crenshaw, who's a Black Skinhead from Minnesota. He came out here because of Maximum Rock'n'Roll and organized and anti-fascist movement in the 80s. They had like file cabinets. They had dossiers on fascist people. They like had a security team. I mean, there's like this whole ... It's an amazing story. But it was all because of this, like sort of analog network of information. So, to me, thinking about, I just maybe have a node in Vancouver, Canada that I just got connected with. I still need to kind of investigate that. But like Ellensburg, Walla Walla. The cities are harder but there is more. It's more diffuse, but there's more nodes, but it's harder to define. Yeah, a little bit in Olympia, little bit in the Peninsula. Wolf Creek and now Northern California. So, I'm really working on a regional network of people with skills and information. And people who like show a desire to be interconnected in whatever way that looks like, whether that's, you know, once in a while or more often. Some of these people are travelers. And so, developing networks outside of legible systems that our networks of resilience, so, and that's all I think a lot my, my 80s punk aesthetic. 

Vignette 10: Analog and Digital Connections, Mutual Aid and Skill Building

And also like, I mean I have a lot of grief for the analog age, like the loss of the analog age. And like, people had to come together. Even the most recluse people would still like they would get dragged out of the house to the punk show or whatever. And people think they're connected through digital means. And actually, I am connected to like my friends in Scotland. I'm still connected to the person that I was with in1988, on my first trip. I keep visiting and like the last time I was there was for my birthday last year and I was like, "I keep showing up in these different gender presentations. Like, what do you see? And he's like, "Oh, I just see you." And it was like, "Awww." But like, you know, digital services allow me to keep track of people far away, but it also is not connection. I was actually having a total outburst yesterday about people on mutual aid signal chats posting mutual aid, asking like ... that is not mutual aid. That is not. Mutual aid is relational, and when you just broadcast, :I need rent" Or like, you know, I give somebody money on the cash app and a year later they're like messaging me like, "hey, blah, blah. Here's my whole story." I'm like, "I don't know you." Like, this isn't mutual aid. This is aid. And feel free to ask for it, but stop using the word mutual aid, because there's no mutuality in the way you're doing this. So, I'm also hoping to foster a little bit more ... I feel like people have lost their stamina for being uncomfortable with other people. People who may not have the right words, you know, or who are from a different context, either culturally or age wise or whatever. And so I'm hoping to kind of get people, if you have to learn a physical skill, you have to be there in person. And if you're there in person, there's going to be peopling and peopling will cause friction. And then we have to work through friction. So that's definitely part of that dynamic. It's like we just got; it's like we got to get out of the house. We got to find each other. 

Vignette 11: Authoritarianism and Space for Evolution

I actually, even in the face of like the rise of fascism and climate change and everything else, I'm super interested in the interstitials. I think the more crunchy things get, and the more things start fracturing, there's going to be spaces for evolution and existence in these ... more and more spaces for things to happen. So, I'm really curious about what that looks like. And like, yeah, like empowering people who feel ... like, I just see so many disassociated sort of, like young people who are, like, stuck in doom scroll with their phone or whatever. And like breaking that up a little bit and just watching them come to life a little bit more and be like, "Oh, I'm really good at this weird thing," you know. So, I think between those two things, like, just like, how can we actually take advantage of the spaces that are going to start to open up. I think it happens in any kind of state that has, you know, very authoritarian overtones. There ends up being these like networks, these mycelial networks that start forming. Because you can't, you can't stop people from doing that. In fact, they probably will do it more with pressure. I mean, I often look to other peoples and other ... I mean, even within the United States. I mean, I was going to say other places, but it happens in the United States to non white people, right. Like this isn't new to non white people. Like, you talk to Indigenous people and like, "Yeah, welcome. Welcome to the party. This is great." You know, so like, I think about the Campesina movement, right, which is facing extreme opposition and it's still really, resisting, especially the women in that movement, you know. I think about all the time, like 70s and 80s, Central and South America. There was so much resistance and some really horrific shit. So, often I look outside of white culture for narratives. There's a Black woman that did an interview on, I can't remember on what podcast, the week of the election, and she's like, "Don't future trip because you'll have to do it at least twice. Once while you're worrying about it and once while it happens." And so, I think a lot about like what can I actually affect. Like, I can't affect things at the national level. I can't affect the chaos ... and they actually want chaos. They want everybody to be shut down. They want everybody to be scrambled and discombobulated and hopeless and despairing. And that's how fascism succeeds. That's how it takes off. So part of my personal work is just to be like, no, I'm not letting them win. And like really trying to transmit that, especially to people who have less cultural context. You know, people who maybe grew up in, like, a nice suburban town in California or whatever, right. Like where it's like, kind of homogeneous, maybe not entirely. But yeah, just being like there, there is context. Here are some stories about other places and other people. Or here's some stories about people who, like, live in the middle of California and don't have a reservation because they're not tribally recognized or whatever. You know, that story is. So I think it's just perspective. Not to, you know, sort of valorize people because I think, you know, things were very lumpy in a lot of those movements. I think about the Black Panthers. Like the Black Panthers are amazing, and also like, oh, my God. Or like AIM. To like recognize that misogyny was, like really huge. I remember that from the 80s, you know, it's like misogyny was just kind of part of the water you were swimming in. But now it's like horrifying. It's like, god, those were problematic movements. But there was also such amazing things. Oregon Health Plan is because of the Black Panthers chapter in Portland.  They were one of the only Panther chapters that got dental care going. And that's why there's such good dental care in OHP because the state was like, oh, shit, we got to outdo the Panthers. 

Vignette 12: Zines and Propagating Information

I just got a a laser printer so we can make zines. 

MEO: I was gonna ask ... that literally was my next question. Do you have any of your older zines? 

I have weirdly this thing we made in high school that was like a vanity zine with me and my high school friend. It was just photos of us. And people bought it. We had like a clothing store like remix Goodwill clothes and then sell them. We had like a display rack and whatever. People would make appointments. Like, we have that. I don't have any of the political stuff. I have flyers. I might have ... I have an 80s time capsule that rarely open. There might be stuff in there. There's like letters and photographs and zines, so. I mean, I was going to join the IRPC here, which is ... I don't know what it's called. Something Print Resource Center, but it's like kind of expensive and it kind of doesn't feel like the vibe that I want. So, the idea of samizdat that during the Cold War, which was Eastern European, even typewriters were controlled by the government. And so, people hand wrote how-tos. It's like just this information network of these like low grade handwritten things. So, I'm thinking about like how to do samizdat for the age of surveillance. You know, and that's also some of the stuff we talked about last night, which I will not talk about on recording, but that could be like samizdat, right. Like you could have .... and then one of the older fairies that Wolf Creek wants to do samizdata, which are like thumb drives, which is really interesting. We're talking about like propagating information in the age of surveillance. Like sort of in this old school ... like I think about Cuba, when Cuba did not have much Internet access. There was literally dudes who would have these hard drives and they would download a week’s Internet content to these hard drives. And you would subscribe to the hard drives, and they would carry them to your house and they pick up the old drive and they give you the new drive. And it was like this really interesting emergent network of ways to work around lack of ... that was lack of connectivity. And I think there's also some case to be made for creating lack of connectivity. I have a burgeoning zine library. Because it's just so, so good. Yeah, there's a there's a third space here called Bridge Space, and I was thinking about sharing an office, which would be relatively affordable and using that as the zine shop. And also doing like teaching people how to do things you know. So it's just, I don't know, that's just my instinct now. It's like, how can I propagate this information and like empower other people to take it. And just like when I used to take things into the user research lab. I'd design some kind of UI and I would think I really thought it through and I'd put it in the hands of somebody in the lab and they would immediately do something weird with it. And I was like, wow. So, I feel like that's what would happen with zines. Like, you know the second I'm like empowering people to make zine, like, really cool shits going to happen. That's also, I think, why I like teaching is because, like people just, I'm like, "I would not have done it that way. Huh. OK." Well, but if they're doing something that's going to go in a frustrating direction, I'll be like, m"you ight want to hold the the utility knife at a different angle." 

GMT: If you want to keep fingers. 

Yeah. :You're about to, like, crush your toe, so."  There's kind of a balance between, like pointing them in a productive direction and also just watching what they do. 

Vignette 13: Forestry Camp, Community and Skill Building

Yeah, at forestry camp, I wanted to cut down 100-foot tree with a chainsaw and there was like 40 people. There's usually ... they didn't expect all the people to show up. My ... I got thrown off a horse when I was 11 and fractured, fractured 3 neck vertebrae. So like, as I age, my grip strength is different every day. There's just like things aging, whatever. And I was like, I am ... because I'm doing manual labor while I'm waiting for disability, which is the great American way to destroy yourself while waiting for disability claim, which is crazy. So I showed up to forestry camp and I was like I can't lift a 28 inch blade chainsaw and cut down the tree. And there's also a lot of younger people who had never done a big cool thing. So I was like I want them to do the big cool. Thing and I was like, "I wanted to do that." But I didn't and I got to watch them. So it's a little bit of, like, like knowing my capacity, but also just being like I going to just get some joy from watching you do it. So, there's a lot of ... there's a little bit of grief, but it's easier than I thought. There's a lot of stuff I've had to give up and I like, I was a skier. That's daycare in Colorado, was skiing. Before I was two, I was skiing, and I had to give that up. And I was shocked that it was like, "it's fine." I have snowshoes. Everything's slower. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Vignette 14: Wolf Creek Intergenerational Ties

I actually knew about Wolf Creek for like 9 years and I'm like, "I am not going to that chaos. Like, no." 

MEO: And now you're like, how do I organize this chaos. 

My really good friend was like, "you need to go." And I went and I'm like, I was right, this is chaotic. And also there was something very special about that land. It's been a continuous queer sanctuary since 1973. With Assunta and then, you know the Trans Woman nun with a gun. And this the history of that, and watching, like sort of people interacting in that space and like knowing the history and just seeing the context now, where it just really needs a lot of support and love. And there's just not people who are able to support that land. So, I joined the building committee to hopefully make the land more accessible for aging people. Sanitation. I've, you know, I don't really want to get too deep into their sanitation practices, but I have feelings. I was there for Beltane last year. That was my first gathering and I ... as I age I don't have as many elders or even people in my age group, so it's often me going to these things with younger people or I'm going, you know, with people who don't .... like people my age and older, like, there's a lot of people who kind of, sort of feel like they figured out who they are and they don't continue to, like, get curious and evolve. So, there's a lack of curiosity about, like, sort of how younger people show up. Actually, when when friends my age and older like "how can you hang out with young people?" And I'm like, "they got the new stuff. I got the old stuff. I want the new stuff," and they kind of were like, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense." But I was at Beltane, and the story of Assunta, who was one of the original residents. Like, I felt an affinity to assume to Assunta, and I'm like, you know, Assunta was a Vietnam War protester who broke in the draft offices and through like anchor blood around the offices. And actually had to leave the East Coast because things got, I guess, pretty tense. And so, I was like, oh, I feel this like you know, sort of cultural ancestor, protest ancestor. And I've been asking myself a lot, like in this current age of surveillance, like, what does protest look like? Like in the 80s, it looked very different from me, where we were like, out in the streets, we were laying down in front of nuclear waste trucks. It was like much more, but it was also very analog and it was organized through phone calls and the zines. And now with like surveillance and social media and like, I just keep coming back to, like, what is dissent look like in this age of increasing fascism? So, like having this sense of Assunta being a thread. And then there's a younger person there who is called Crow Sister, who named herself, a trans girl who named herself after Assunta, and and came to my camp. I was like the witch in the woods. I was like my camp's, like far up the hill. And I'm like, just want to be the witch in the woods. And I'm sitting in my little camp and she walks up. And I can see myself in her, she like, she's really .... she really reminds me of myself when I was young. Like, really fiery. And we sat and had, like, an hour conversation. And I was like, oh, there's the thread. That's the ... it was the first time I really felt clear secession from like some you know older ancestor who's no longer embodied to a young person who is in their 30s in the Bay Area and is like doing a bunch of stuff. And so that was really, I think, one of the things that was really resonant to me, was like, oh, there's a lot of possibility for like the ... there's over 1000 remains on that land. There's the unclaimed ashes of the dead from the AIDS crisis. There's photos of altars that look like they're covered in snow there's so many ashes on these altars. 

Vignette 15: Wolf Creek and Dissent

I mean, I have a magical practice and it's a very noisy place. There's a lot of trickery ancestors there. You have to have really good boundaries. I'm like, just because they don't have bodies, doesn't mean you have to put up with their shit. But it's also like the actual people who are still like the older generation, who come to some of the bigger gatherings but like, feel kind of pushed out. And then the younger people, like I'm sitting there at Beltane, at one of the a fire nights, and I'm watching the older crowd and watching the younger crowd, who are talking about Palestine and talking about grief. And they're talking about climate change and the older people like, "I just want to come here to party. Like, I had to deal with the AIDS crisis. I'm like tired. Like, I'm coming here to like find joy, not hear more grief." So, I'm watching these two cohorts just not connect. And the older people are trying to disrupt the younger people and then like a bunch of them just got up and left. And it was ... It's probably my third night in the land. And I'm like, there's weaving here, and at 56, I'm kind of like in between some of these positionalities. So, like I'm hoping also to engage curiosity on both ends. Because I think that the older people are not curious about what the younger people are up to and the younger people are not curious .... and there's a lot of, like cultural disconnect, you know, which I think curiosity would transcend in a lot of ways. So. 

Vignette 16: Wolf Creek, Intergenerational Connections, and Social Inflammation

I mean that's that's some of the work at Wolf Creek with the generational thing. Is I hear young people be like, we want intergenerational community, we want ancestors, and then they get really fucked off with, like, people misgendering them or whatever. And it's like, being a person who's older like I had to really reprogram my brain. And I was really committed to doing it. But no one learns from shame. So, all they're doing is just screaming at these this older generation, who just feels like they're being pushed out of this place. It was literally a sanctuary for them, right. Like so there's like, I just watched this inflammation. It feels like social inflammation, like pushing them apart. Where I'm like, OK, you need to call somebody who has the capacity to go sit with this person and create some social connection and then happens ... There's one person on the land that's kind of just a trickstery dude. He's like 86. And I'm like, I'll, I will go hang with him. He's, yeah, he's problematic. But he's kind of like my relatives in Iowa, you know, he's going to, like, poke your midriff, either metaphorically or actually. He's just a little bit of a bastard. But he also fixes all our small appliances and he owns land on the sanctuary and is a neighbor and is an elder. And I looked at them actually in the in the queer and trans gathering last summer. I was like, "Ain't no elder store we're trading him in at. This is the one we got. We gotta fix the one we got. We can't get a new one." Misgendered, being misgendered sucks. Like it's literally life or death for some folks. You can literally just be like, "Can't deal. Somebody please step in." So, I think we need to just be able to, like, have people who have identified themselves, and there may be only a few people in the community. And it's like, you call over, you know, the people who can actually go and just be, like ... cause like, I'll go sit with this person and he'll tell .... he tells the best stories. I don't even care if they're true. I don't know if they're true. I don't care. They're hilarious. And at the end, I'll be like, so you do know that my pronouns are they them, right? "Yes. Mhhh." You know, this other person is ze/zir, right? I know it's weird, but like, you can get fairy names. You can change your fairy name six times a freaking gathering and you don't have a problem with that, dude. "OK, fine. Mhhhh." But it's like we have a we have like some basis of trust. So, I can just be like look like "I understand, you're gonna fuck it up. But like, can you please at least ..." and he's actually changed since that conversation. He's actually changed a lot. So, I think he just needed to be ... feel like he was had, you know, he wasn't being pushed out. Well, there's there's this whole movement to, like, excommunicate certain people in the Wolf Creek community. And I'm like, "there's just an avatar for the shadow that you're not dealing with." Like the universe is going to come and stick their hand up somebody else's ass and make them the sock puppet of your shadow. If you keep removing people, you're not dealing with the thing. So, you actually have to deal with the thing. Some of these people that they want to excommunicate, yeah, they're ...  there's one with like 5 Leo placements that's .... they are hard to deal with, but kicking them out fix anything. Because it'll just pop up again. It'll just keep coming back, so. And the other group is trying to like hive off and do their own gathering space. And I'm also, "Like, OK, wow, that's also gonna probably not do what you wanted to do." You know, it's like separation is not ... like we ... separation is probably going to kill us actually in the current climate. Literal climate and and metaphoric climate. Yeah, there's there's definitely like, we just need literal sanctuary. But for younger people, sanctuary means something different. Like for trans people, it's like I need somewhere where people are not going to kill me. Like the older gay culture was like, I need AIDS not to kill me, right. And I need to, like, process that grief. And like younger people like I need need to actually have a space where I'm not being attached.

Vignette 17: Finding Shared Reality and Initiations

You need to get out more and realize that, like people who have ideological differences are not that far away from you. Like I had ... my last place in Seattle, I was downsizing their city apartment because they moved to San Juan Island. I was like, "Oh, have you met your neighbors?" And they're like, "no, they have a MAGA flag." And I'm like, "Cool, who's going to have the chainsaw when the windstorm blows the tree down over your driveway? You better make some cookies and go over there and say hi." So, I find myself having conversations and especially because I do have some rural context. I was a roadie. So, I've seen 49 of the 50 states, just kind of ambiently, having days off in like really odd, out of the way places. And it doesn't take long to find shared reality. And I've had really hostile people be like, "I don't really like those faggots, but I like you," you know. I mean, I'm kind of like, "OK, that's a start. That's a start." 

So yeah, and also like if it's not you, then it might be somebody else that can. I think I told you last night the story of talking to that guy from Missouri at the airport. Getting stuck at the airport. And at some point I'm like, OK, I got to tell you, this story doesn't make sense unless you know it used to look like a girl. And like, watching them just kind of like adjust, but they adjust so quickly because they're like, well, shit like you've already seen pictures of my kids. And so it's really being ... I don't do it if I am not resourced to do it, but if I feel really resilient and I feel relaxed, I love going and talking to people who look like they might kill me. And then like letting them know, like in a subtle way that I'm trans. Like not really saying it directly but like being like, "So I didn't always look like this," and just letting them kind of ... But often it ... I haven't really had anybody react poorly to that. And it's been in strange circumstances like tour van breaking down in the middle of Wyoming kind of stuff, you know. And it's just like, I think coming at it from, like, I see your humanity. I'm not going to be afraid of you. I'm going to try to find your humanity in my humanity. And I think there's something that human bodies recognize in that kind of approach. Yeah, I called myself the Borderlands witch because, like I was, I was like, if I was a Lord of the Rings character, I'd probably be Aragorn. Like this Ranger that's like, you know, blows in the middle of the night, blows back out, and people like, "What just happened?" I think, less as I get older. Probably me in my second age. But I definitely like, you know, having like had a corporate job, I see those as initiations. Like my teacher who taught me northern European magic said "adverse circumstances are initiations," which really helped me with like heroin addiction. Like being, you know, homeless. Like all of these things are initiations. Like corporate jobs, initiations. These are all initiations so I can actually interact with those fields. I can see myself in somebody who's struggling in a certain way. I'm like, "Oh, I I have felt that." I mean, sometimes I do get triggered and I'm like, "OK, I need somebody else to come in and do this because I gotta go." And it's surprising, but I often I I think this is kind of like sometimes I do tell narrative stories about the person that I'm trying to cope with. And I don't know if the story is true, but it helps me to like, be like, "What if they're just returning from a funeral? What if their partner, you know, just left them," or whatever, you know, like trying to, like, find some way to soften my reaction and feel more sort of, I guess, emotion and resonance with that person, even if maybe that story is not true. Or imagining what it would be like if I was like, you know, in the circumstance I'm perceiving. If I was like a person who was really lost in the cultural conditioning and like ... I had a very shouty executive at one of my jobs, who was like a table pounder and, like, cursed. And the rest of my team were like, "I can't deal with it." And I'm like, "I'll do it." And so, I was sitting across from him and I would just like sort of like, "When was the last time this was a whole complete person?" And I got an immediate picture of him as a tiny child, like, looking up at both parents and just being screamed at. And I'm like, "Oh, my God, I don't know if this guy is going to experience joy in his lifetime." And I went out, and I was like, I kind of told the story to the, my team and they were like, "How can you respect him?" I'm like "Oh, no, he's an asshole. I don't respect him at all," but I also can sit in a room with things, I can imagine how I'm like, that's a that's a life sentence to never feel true joy. And to keep amassing money and goods and shit, and it's just making it worse. And he's, like, more and more disconnected from his humanity. I'm like that, I would not want that on anybody. It's kind of like ... that's also like the Aragorn thing. It's like, I actually, I'm not afraid of being hit in the face because I got I got beat up by 4 guys and kicked out of school. And I realized now it's because gender nonconforming, I was punk. I got, you know, I was "asking for it." The principal kicked me out. But it's like having had that initiation of being like I was ... that was one of the times where I might have died. It was because I was beaten so badly and so, but that happened so early that I was like that bad to be hit in the face. Though, I often will take ... I often will put myself between me and other people who feel less able to defend themselves physically. And try to ... I don't want to in a fight. I'm like deescalate. But like, I don't also mind going up and being like, "Hey, like what's happening? Can we, can we not," so those initiations I think are hard but important. 

Vignette 18: Social Network

I had a kind of a rupture with my current partner, very early on. And I said at one point in this thing, where it was kind of intense, and I was like, "I feel very sad and disconnected and it's really ... you know, I just feel very disconnected from you." And they flew right past it. They're younger than me. And I was like, "Hang on, like, did you not hear me say that?" And they're like, "yeah, like whatever. It's just like, people say that stuff all the time." And I'm like, "Ohh." And they're like, "Well, oh, if you say that to your friends, do they, like, stop and care about that?" And I thought, "Wow, at this point in my life, like yes. Good therapy marker." Like, I rarely see therapy markers in real time. And like, the fact that I can actually name emotions. I had to spend years in therapy with an emotion wheel and like, painfully pick out my emotions. So, it's a huge accomplishment to say, you know, what I'm feeling in real time, but also that marker of like, yeah, actually, my friends do care when I say something like that. So, I realized that I've cultivated people around me that are kind of working towards the same goal. And I think ... I don't know if I told you they quote, Prentice Hemphill, who is like a black queer writer: "Boundaries are where I can love you and me at the same time." "And so, when, almost every day I'm like ... and that changes all the time. You know, sort of liked it my call with my partner last night. We both kind of were, like, overextended and tired. And they got crunchy at the end. And I'm like, we're, "Oh, I got to back up a little bit. So, I can feel me and I can feel you." So, that that quote, really, I think, drives how I'm cultivating my network. I don't ever, like, dramatically end relationships. I just kind of maybe turn down the volume on the ones that are maybe not ... the original, I mean I don't know, I'm not a linguist, but the original word for sin and Aramaic was ripe and unripe, or hitting the mark and missing the mark, was much more like cyclical. And I feel like it's kind of ripe and unripe is how we do my relationships. And I like, "Oh, we're just not in the season of this relationship," and so it just kind of goes a little farther away. So, I've a pretty big network and it's hard to track all of that. Sometimes it's just very intermittent and we have to have agreements that if I don't call for weeks, it's because I'm all squirreling so. But it was really an important conversation for us to have. You know, it was that was ... they also turned to me, like, "What were you doing at 38?" I was like, "Oh, shit. Yeah, that's good context for me. OK, yeah. A lot more compassion from me, yeah. So, it was like it was like an uncomfortable experience, but it was like there was really good things that came out of it.  Actually, I think some clarity with ways of being. 

Vignette 19: The Pull of Cities

My first house was in the outskirts of Denver. Now, it's like squarely in Denver. But we had horses on all sides, lots. We had, we had a regular suburban-ish house, but there was horses around us. I was going back to Iowa in the summers. I always had horses around me. Like, I remember my first horse. I must have been like before kindergarten, because I remember this horse was named pigeon, was 16 hands high, which is 64 inches at the shoulder. And my little feet just stuck straight out on this horse. So I've always ... Yeah, I miss horses. I it's hard in the city, but ... I keep trying to leave the city because, at 50, in my 50s it's just, it's a lot. But I keep getting pulled back into the city. Because I think there's work to be done with like young, urban, trans and queer folks who don't have exposure to, like, a depression era father who just like puts tools in your hand when you're 5. So it's like I ... during the pandemic, I ended up living outside of Seattle, in the mountains, with 19 chickens in a tiny house. Taking care of these chickens, and this garden. Ended up back in the city. When I was going to leave Seattle, there was multiple places, like the Peninsula, Olympic Peninsula. I was going to move more Central Oregon, and I just keep getting drawn back to cities. And I'm like, "Why?" But I think really it is, there's work. And so I'm connected also to Wolf Creek Land Sanctuary in Southern Oregon. I spend like at least a week a month there. So that's like my rural context that I go to like kind of unplug from everything, yeah. 

Vignette 20: Cities Rural Spaces Corporate Gutter Punk

I've been kind of flirting with Portland on and off. I've been in Seattle for, since 2002. And I kept thinking, is it Seattle or is it modernity? Like am I pushing against modernity because every city is changing because of the nature of technology and everything. Finally, it's like, "No, Seattle really all the cool people can't afford to live there anymore." So, I've been kind of coming to Portland on and off. My high school friend lives here, so I finally got a spot down here. I was born in Denver, so I think like, my deep ... and my dad is from a depression era farm in Iowa. My mom's parents had a gentleman country farm in Wisconsin. They were actually Chicago city people. But I kind of had this, like, sort of farm dad. I was treated as a farmhand, even though we were living in a town in California. And then, I grew up with horses. And so always had this connection to, like, the Iowa farming and just, you know, my Colorado routes. I felt like the Colorado accent is gone. There's like, this flat kind of hazy accent that no longer exists. That has probably ruined my pronunciation for life. But, so it's Denver, until I was 8. Then Central California, the coast of Central California. I ended up leaving home at 17 because my dad was a engineer in the space program when the challenger exploded, he went to ICBM missiles. Like building warheads for Reagan, and I was like, "no, yeah, I'm not living with your missile money." So, I ended up on the streets of Hollywood at 17, in 1985. And I was living in this notorious weekly hotel that was ... that was where I met my first trans woman. So, I knew a bunch of trans women, but they were, like, very fem. It was very binary people if they were going to transition ... it was much more pressure to be fully transitioned. And I was shooting heroin with a gay prostitute on Hollywood Blvd when I found out about the AIDS crisis. And I was 17. We were sharing needles and I was like, "Ahhh." And somehow I didn't get AIDS, which is amazing. I quit heroin when I was ... I remember one day in Los Angeles ... it's usually like almost non weather. It was one day with like Blue Sky and fluffy clouds. And I was sitting on the roof of the building I was living in and I was like, "This is going to kill me. You got to go." So, I went and just did cold Turkey at my dad's house. I was 17. And then I went ... I lived in my car for a while in San Francisco, and then I ended up living in San Francisco in the late 80s, which was amazing. Then I was in New York for the 90s, which was amazing. I was in Los Angeles around the 2000s, early 2000s, which was also amazing. And then Seattle, which was amazing, at first. And it was like, mhhh. I did a couple stints in London and Scotland, as well, and like lots of traveling between, where I kept just leaving and coming back. I have 30 years working in tech. So, there's a certain amount of like gutter punk, squatter, ex-junkie, and there's a certain  amount of like corporate. So it's like, really, I was like, "Why did I end up in corporations?" I'm like, "Oh, that was an initiation so I can go walk in the square world," and, you know, sort of work that magic. 

Vignette 21: Three Ages

I think about the three ages. It's zero to 30 is the first age, and 30 to 60 a second age, and I'm entering my third age, which is 60 and beyond. And I think in my first age I was very ... so much trauma. Like I had a very mentally ill mother, you know, I ... my parents divorced when I was 4. I went to a different school every year. I didn't know was neurodivergent. I was raised by this depression era farmer who didn't know how to dress me. So, I was just like this crazy outcast. And so I think the first third of my life I was very nihilistic. I didn't care what happened to me. I was like, I got the message that I was trashed. I was like, "I'm trashed, it doesn't matter." I mean, I got to do a lot of cool things because I was just like, "yeah, why not? Let's do it." But I think the first third was very much just trying to stay alive. And then the middle third, I started managing creative teams and kind of learning how to mentor. But I was still very like, "I don't know what's going on with me personally." I didn't feel ... it was a lot of trauma therapy I went through in my kind of second age, and a lot of .... just various kinds of therapy. So many workshops, so many workshops. And so, I was really committed to like ... there was this moment, I think when I when I turned 40, I was like, I need to decide if I'm living or dying because I'm doing a shitty job of both. And so, I thought about it. I'm like, "I really don't want to die." And like when I was like, "I'm going to choose to live." I immediately was like, "God, now the hard stuff is coming. Now I have to do a lot of work." So, my 40s were really dedicated to trying to just peel off all of this stuff, and I was like, "Some beings have made a huge effort to keep me on this planet." There's multiple stories I could tell where I should be dead. Like, I'm not exaggerating. I literally the fact that I'm here is crazy. And so I just was like, "I don't know why you kept me here, but I want to know what my purpose is. "And so I think ... as I reached my third age, and I actually did, I don't know if ... [to the recorder] I'm showing a tattoo, it's basically a little squirrel seed. It's a skeleton squirrel in the middle of the web. So, this is an open spell about my third age. It's a commitment to using my positionality and my resource to help those in their first and second ages. Because I see so much of people aging and then like just kind of turning inward and not reaching for people who may need guidance or resources or connections or, you know. And I, that's all I want to really do with, I think the third age of my life. So, it's a very if you had met me 10 years ago or 30 years ago, I would be a very different person. There was a lot of drugs and alcohol. I had to really work through um, I went from shooting heroin to shooting crystal meth. But I never went to rehab. I was always just like, "This is wrong and I need to stop." And so, like, I would quit, but it was sometimes a very long process. So.