Vignette 1: To Eugene

I had attempted to move to San Jose to help run a Catholic worker house with my spouse and there was an interpersonal problem, and we fled and spent about four months traveling houseless, under housed. So, the first place we came was north, here because we have friends in Springfield, who ... one of my closest friends lives in ... at the time lived in Springfield. And the grandfather of the spouse had passed, so they were out of town. They said, oh, you could stay in our house for a week. So, the first place we landed was Springfield. And my spouse had ties to Lost Valley in Dexter. My spouse had lived in Dexter for five years. In like intentional community Lost Valley there. So, my spouse Ming had already had some connection with Eugene. We had these friends here. And then we went on our journey, where we went to Montana and Idaho and Washington, and we were looking for community. So, we went to many communities and did a whole thing. Then we ended up in Ojai, CA for a month and then at a micro farm in Vineta, where we tended their goats. And then in Ojai we were tend the chickens. But the ... so when we were living in Vineta, it was my birthday, and we did a ritual in the backyard of those friends in Springfield. And I buried half of a snakeskin there. And I .... it's just as part of the ritual. And so I think that's part of how we ended up in Eugene. Living in Eugene because I didn't understand like I was feeling kind of putting down roots in this area. 

 Vignette 2: Layers of Community

Well, we have been in Vegas for seven years as Catholic workers. So, we are not Catholic or Christian, but we had been living for seven years during the Works of Mercy with these Catholic, mostly Catholic people. And that got more and more impossible with the heat and with only part ... I feel like only maybe like half of me could show up in that community. So, then we had to leave. But I, but once I found community ... because I found community a little before that, when I was on this sacred peace walk in Nevada. And then once I realized community was real and possible, then I was like, oh my god, I got to live in community. So, then I had these seven years in Vegas as a Catholic worker, and then I knew I needed to live in like, you know, we live in community now. Like, and then Wolf Creek is a kind of community and then help run a radical mental health collective, which is like, you know, like a virtual community. And we belong ... my spouse is Jewish, and we belong to the big tent Synagogue here in town. So, we have a little bit of that community. And I've done this sect of Hinduism for like 20 something years. I did the math, 22 years. So then we go up to Portland for, you know, [???] up there. And so we have like different layers and levels and types of community that we like to belong to, even though it's so hard. 

 Vignette 3: Radical Mental Health Collective

Started in Vegas about, probably be nine years in May. So, we do it through zoom since COVID started. Who's the ... What are the ... Who are the communities that you're trying to reach through that radical mental health collective? Ah, just anybody who's drawn to it I guess. You know, I had gone to, like, very mainstream support groups when I was first diagnosed like 18 years ago. And they were bullshit, and I didn't want to go to that. So that I needed to find another radical people and to lie with and. So, you know, NAMI type people aren't going to probably have fun in this collective because we have a different mentality. Or, you know, not necessarily NAMI, but just like, you know, like regular. How would you describe your ... the vision or mentality of the group? Oh well, it's supposed to be anarchist, you know. Like, but but in reality, I'm holding almost the whole thing because a lot of people come and go. And so .... but, but I guess the mission is ahhh friends make the best medicine. All bodies are valid bodies, you know, like a .... people are at choice about using medicalized language or more like experiential, non-pathologizing language and ah just telling the truth. Oh, and there's no like expert. There's no mandated reporting, so we can tell the truth about anything and would not be scared. Yeah and it's free and it's ... So, there's no paperwork and we just come as we are. It's it's great. It's it's one of the best things I do and one of the most meaningful things I do, but it's also hard to hold the whole thing. I mean, Ming helps me hold it. But I wish ... a lot of times when people are feeling well they disappear, or so a lot of times you know, it's a lot. It's a lot to facilitate them and keep it going. We used to do like art things and dance things and other stuff in Vegas, in person, and now it's just we'll see the the support stuff. 

 Vignette 4: Wolf Creek

How did you connect with Wolf Creek?

Oh, my good friend invited me for TAINT last year. So TAINT's like the trans, Two-Spirit, intersex ... I don't know the acronym actually, but yeah, just a friend pulled me in ... our our chosen family member pulled me in. It's wonderful because I could show up as my whole self. I'm allowed to be witchy and queer and trans and, you know, crazy. Like I'm allowed to be my whole self there, and. So that's fun and I don't have to wear the regular amount of clothing, that's fun. And just experiment with the shared liberation, including sexual and all the liberations we could try to do together there. And you know it's awkward and clunky and very janky with way more rats than I prefer. But it's also kind of, you know, not expensive to go there and, you know, welcoming in a lot of ways. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't until last summer that I first went there. Yeah so it's rather new, but we've been there a couple of times for a work party and this and that. I've only begun to ... I feel like in every community I've lived in or really been to there's like the honeymoon period and you know, so, so I've only barely begun to dip into that like, the more hard stuff. Mostly just the fun parts so far. But we did we did join, so we're supposed to go in spring and do like a ... what do they call it? The decision-making, the consensus training and then we can like become like voting members, and then we'll get deeper into the BS that every community has at its center. So, I'm ready. I'm ready for that. And I ... when I ask Spirit, Spirit is consistently extraordinarily positive about this place so.

 Vignette 5: Wolf Creek Accessibility

Going back to Wolf Creek, is that ... have you found it pretty like accessibility friendly, disability friendly like they've ...

They want to be, and I think historically, in some ways, that has happened more than any other community. But still, when Ming and I went the other day, we only ... we were supposed to stay two nights, but only stayed one. I had to leave. There was no ... like they gave us the cabin with the ramp, but the barn they were cooking in has uneven stairs, wretched, uneven stairs, with no hand. And some people are freaked out by rats, and there was not a working toilet that worked for my body. And so so basically, we could only stay this one night and that was sad. But I'm going to plan better if we try to go in the weekend ... in the winter. But in the summer, that's when TAINT was, there's there's more toilets available and it's a little less ... there's the mud. The mud was really hard for mobility. So, there's a known issue of people with especially mobility issues having trouble. And then the pain. Yeah, with the cold but but I think for mental health, and especially neurodivergence ... half the people there are some form of something. It's like almost a norm, so that is wonderful and that is respected and mostly understood and not treated as a big deal. Yeah and as the ... you know, it changes so much depending on who's living there and running the place. So hopefully like I'm friends with one of the people who lives there right now, who has designed a ramp that .... for those very stairs I'm complaining about to the barn. So hopefully it's moving in that direction. 

 Vignette 6: Housing Community

I think we are all in community whether we admit it or not. So, if we were instead in some cold-hearted apartment complex, we would just, we would still be in community, we would be pretending that we weren't and being even shitter to each other. So at least here there's the, you know, ostensibly we we care about each other and ostensibly we want to try to do it so. That's helpful to me. And I have, you know, people have left already. This community is only just over a year old and a couple people left at about one year in. And you know, hopefully they'll find happiness somewhere else, but for me, I just feel like I know from multiple communities I've lived in we're going to hit that. So, it's just a matter of is it worth it because of .... are the other factors going to make it worth it. Like the carrying charge is like our rent here, it's so low that it's like very appealing. And the location's you know pretty nice. And so the other factors make ... If I'm going to do the work somewhere, I might as well be here where I am right now, because moving is a pain in the ass.

 Vignette 7: Spouse

Yeah, I was very quiet and reserved and awkward and didn't really talk to people for some years when I was a young person. So, it wasn't until I was, I guess, yeah, in my 30s that Ming brought me out to the desert for the sacred Peace Walk, and I learned about community and that it was possible. And started doing it.

How did you and Ming meet?

Ah, it was a mutual friend’s 40th birthday party that we both almost didn't go to. 

And then you did. Where was that? 

Sacramento. We both lived in Sacramento at the time.

And so, you have been together ...

Yeah like, uh, we've been together like 13 years or so, around that. We just celebrated our 10-year wedding last March. 

 Vignette 8: Live Journaling & Zines

I had been like a live journaler and then like live journaling kind of petered out a bit. And so, I just started blogging on Blogger and that kind of became a daily practice for probably like 12 years or something. So, when I would go on trips, I would like prewrite it and schedule it because I loved the .. you know, I'm very ... I love daily-ness. I love to do a lot of things every day. And then finally like a couple of years ago, I let go of that and I just blog, you know, couple times a week usually. But I have other blogs and websites that's just the main one. On LiveJournal I met a lot of zine-sters because I've been making zines since I was a teenager. So that was one of the main reasons I would go to LiveJournal, was for the there was like 3 different zine groups that I was in. And then we orchestrate trades and a lot of my closest friends I've known for like 20 years through zines. I was in high school and I had a friend at another high school who made his name, so I started my own zine. I used to go to zinefests a lot. Yeah, for a period of time. When I was in Sacramento, I'd go to zinefests in the Bay Area a lot. And there was a certain zinefest called Dear Diary Zine Fest. It's just perzines. Then I got kind of tight with some of the organizers of that, but. I've got a lot of friends who are zinesters and tons of trades and tons of like just through the mail, just sending each other zines. Ming is my archivist, so Ming keeps ... behind this fridge there's like boxes of files, so we have originals and most of certain zines are in print. I made a thing called Functionally Ill for 18 years. It's probably like my most well known zine. And then I make a lot of poetry zines. That's what I'm laying out today is a new poetry zines. And some like fat liberation zines. A couple like vegan recipe zines. Queer zines. Trike Diaries, like disability justice stuff. And that's probably, that's probably most of them ... Oh, maybe like a couple gardening zines, a permaculture zines. That's probably most of ... oh, unsent letters zines.

Unsent letters?

Yeah, yeah.

 Vignette 9: Queer Zine

I think there were three or four issues of that zine. And then the first one I was in like a bi/plan/fluid support group in Sacramento briefly. And so I was ... it was a long time ago. And I was thinking about queer stuff and then the second issue was 10 years later. And I went a bit deeper with some of those topics. And then I think the third issue is way trans-ier and then uh. Yeah so, so yeah, it was all, you know, all pretty much from the heart, autobiographical and helpful. Like writing this probably my main way of processing. That's what ... you know that's why I write so much because it's my way of making sense of my life and everything. Yeah, it was 13 when I started making zines, but before that I was writing poetry. 

 Vignette 10: Rural Urban

I am scared of rural spaces a lot of the time. I think when Ming and I were traveling, and under house, and we went through Idaho, I was the most scared I've ever been because people were very shitty to my spouse who is very clearly POC. And I feared ... I wanted to get out of Idaho quicker than anything. Like I feared for our life honestly. And that's not, you know, normally when ... in Vegas, it didn't feel like dangerous or in Sacramento it did not feel dangerous. So that was like a taste of ... I had been to the South of my mom. My mom is ... was Mexican and it was a little bit scary in the South with my mom. But I was a kid then and I just was a bit clueless. Uh, kind of bumbling about, just going where I was made to. But I as a grown up ... Yes, I find urban spaces over stimulating and overwhelming, and it can be so fun to like, oh my god, everything is here. I could, like, get any kind of food. I could do any any kind of art, I could do anything. It's almost like, whoa, it's like so much. So, I like to visit sometimes. But. I need the rural. I need the quiet and the nature time very much. Uh, it's good to be with the forest nearby. I've never lived with this much water before. So, because like in Vegas, I would go prey in the riverbeds and here the rivers are all full of water. So, I can't really go in them the same way. And you know, the ferns growing on the moss, growing on the trees. That that never ceases to astound me. Like the wetness is just totally overwhelming after being in Vegas for seven years because that was like my reality. It's like opposite. So, the ... I guess the nature stuff nourishes me and ... But yeah, it can be scared, like, oh, I don't really belong here. Oh, like, like there's a bunch of hicks and I'm afraid of them. And so, then I could be ... So that I feel like Eugene is sort of a mix, a bizarre mix. 

 Vignette 11: Freaked Out by Oregon

But then I also am freaked out by Oregon. Like when I came here and I was like ... I thought it was just funny that everybody was white, like I didn't understand that it was like, intentional, terrifying, like history or historical thing. So, I still am learning about the history and trying to like ... OK, I'm a I'm an Oregon person now, what's my responsibility here, and what do I do with this like like horrific shit. Like, what do I do with it? Like, how do I situate myself in it? What am I responsible for? What do I do? How long are you going to live here? Do I need to ... Like sometimes I thought, oh, maybe we'll only be here couple years or something. But it's been a couple of years and we're still here.

 Vignette 12: Discovering Trans-ness

And I and I feel like in Eugene that's where I felt the most free to learn about my transness in Eugene. Because I think I had a couple of housemates in our last community who really made me see, like, oh, like, this is an option. Like I always thought I wasn't a woman. Like I thought it wasn't a woman, but I thought I was kind of stuck, like, oh, I got these breasts, everybody is going to think I'm a woman so I might as well keep woman-ing. But then I realized, oh, like actually, I don't have to do that. I could actually, like go down that path and see what happens. So, I feel like Eugene has been like a very good mix of like whatever is going on here. And I appreciate that. 

You mentioned the housemates that helped you or think like maybe facilitated thinking about your transness ... was there, like, was it just gently encouraging, like you can ... you can show up, like whatever body you have is still trans, like you're still about trans person or where there, like, particular things that they did that made you feel like you could explore your transness. 

Mostly just modeling their trans validity, and I could just see them living their life and feel inspired to try stuff out. And I remember like letting ... because I had shaved my mustache on my like, since I was a teenager, and then just to stop shaving and what's going to happen. Because I knew these people in this house weren't going to hate me for it or something like this is something we could do in this house. So that was like, oh, such a good ... I'll never, yeah, be grateful enough for that. But ... And then also like, I feel like kink .... doing kink was another like path into that. And like the power dynamic things, and then how gender could tie into power. And so, then that became like kind of the obvious next step kind of thing. 

Is there a supportive like trans kink community in Eugene? 

Absolutely not that I've found. 

Oh, no.

There's like wretched attempts at connection, and there's .... if I go to like one of the main big kink events in town, you know, there's a little, little bit of queerness and transness around, but it's mostly, you know. But then in our own little enclaves, our families, yeah. 

 Vignette 13: Nourished at Home

I guess a lot of the nourishing is just in my own home just with my spouse and the love that we share. And liberation that we work toward. And then, you know, we do mutual aid stuff here and the radical Mental Health Collective is virtual, but very, you know, we just met yesterday and is heavenly. And like I do fat ... some fat stuff like the ... I have a fat yoga that I do that's also virtual. Through Ample Movement and you know, making art nourishes me and ritual nourishes me. So that's mostly just in my family and in my home. It's less like out in Eugene, more publicly. 

 Vignette 14: Support Network

I definitely work on that and cultivate it. A lot of my support is out of town, which can limit how much someone can be supportive. But slowly I'm working on building more relationships that are local that are more supportive. 

Yeah. And when you think about building relationships that are more supportive, what are some of the primary things that are meaningful to you when it comes to those relationships?

Oh, I like commitment and reciprocity and honesty. And access intimacy is really important to me, tops. And just listening and learning together and having fun together, and I tend to only be able to be close to people who are ... mostly more radical people or yeah ... almost everyone close to is queer. A lot trans people and. Mostly disabled people. So just people who get it more, I guess. 

 Vignette 15: NBs

Well, where your best friend has identified as genderqueer for a very long time, and so we were teenagers together and. So we have been on a journey with that for a long time and then my best friend went to Naropa and met, met a writer who was a non-binary person and we learned about like some theory about it a long time ago. Like in the 90s and so then now we're living it. And my bestie ended up having a child and I feel like when my bestie had this child it was so hard to maintain that. Some word, wordage and to be perceived as genderqueer that my bestie, mostly succumbed to, like a word like mother. And and then so then, you know, that was part of ... I think a lot about transness and privilege in that, you know, when I met my spouse who I was very surprised. Like I've never met a man like this in my life. This man doesn't have this, this, this, this problem. Every single man I've ever known. That's very interesting. And then digging on my spouse's live journal, I saw this non-binary identification and I'm like, oh, my god, no wonder. OK, it was very exciting and a little bit confusing because they never mentioned it. But when we would walk around, we would get good evening, ladies a lot. And through no like attempt at costuming, really. Just this person was being perceived as a lady a lot. And probably like those first two years we got good evening, ladies a lot. And and then my spouse gained weight and didn't look like a lady to most people as much anymore, and that that mostly stopped but. Yeah, it was this bestie and this spouse mostly the NB ones. Oh, then somebody NB was in the radical mental health collective a long time ago and I learned about those ideas then. And then at our previous community the person I got really close to, who brought me to Wolf Creek, who was in my chosen family these days is NB. And so then but just now I feel like half my friends are NB. At least just pretty common now. 

 Vignette 16: Being Radical

I think autistic people have a reputation for loving justice and then being disabled and queer and I didn't, you know, the normal path was not available to me. So, I think a lot of people who cannot take a regular path are going to either, you know, get radical or get incel-y or whatever. Like what are our options. Like I've been thinking a lot lately about needing to build our own paths, and if we're going to build it, we might as well build it how we want it. So I feel like that's how the radical probably came about. When I was in junior high, I had been really Christian as a child and once I realized, oh, I have a crush on my student teacher who's a lady. That's unexpected. And then, like learning about abortion and how upset people are about aspects of that. And then being like, oh, I got to get off this Christianity path. So now I got to make my own path. So that that was like a proto of it, but also I think poetry just ... you know poetry in my life asks me to be super real, and that's very contrary to mainstream culture of made of lies and lots of so much deceit and categorizing that's not honest. 

It sounds like there was, there was an overlap ... You started writing zines around that same time. 

Yeah. 

Was there that overlap?

Yeah, definitely, 100%. Because I did write for the newspaper at school, too, and so that was like the regular way to go about things. And then the zines were like, I can do anything. I can say anything. No one can stop me. So those like paths I wanted to exploit any path, so I did both for a while. 

In .... at that time, right, a young person, did you face resistance to trying to keep you from going down a different path? 

Yeah! Yeah, I mean, I was encouraged to make money and marry rich and that was not my goal. 

Vignette 17: The Future

I'm dreaming about community that has disability justice at the center rather than tacked on or lied about. That sounds kind of brutal, but most communities are lying about it. So I'm I'm dreaming of, like, an intersectional liberatory community people can live in where my favorite justices are included. And so I fantasize about that and try to read books and gather resources to maybe one day create a community like that. So, I'm excited to see if I can manage. I also dream of a fat queer disabled dance studio. Because all the dance spaces I've been in are for thin people who are able, mostly. I mean, I know that like Sins Invalid exists, but I still have never experienced being in a dance space where I was actually mostly welcome in a way that I wanted. So I would love to start either a pop-up based or actual studio for disabled fat queer dance. And you know, I'm always making zines. There's always more to say with that. I have a chapter in a book I'm supposed to finish soon, which is about like liberation through zine making. And I would really like to start an aftercare collective. I really like emotional ... I like all the aftercare stuff, whether it's for, like after intense scenes or after going to the dentist or whatever people need aftercare for. So, it's very challenging to have a balance of like safety for that and openness that enough people are going to join. So, I tried to start it last year and did not work the way I tried to start it because there were just too few people and. But I really, really love care and aftercare and would love to find a way to bring people together to support each other in those ways. Like with the menu. And yeah, more blogging and I'm interested in maybe making a book ... like a compilation of the Functionally Ill zines in particular. I think a lot of people could use the radical mental health, you know, because I've been making that thing for 18 years and there's a lot of, you know, a lot of the journey ... like with psych meds and diagnosis and getting out of the system and getting on benefits. And both my parents dying and you know, there's so much in those zines that I think a lot of people could probably be helped by. And I'm working on my Emperor energy. I think I've been very Empress and my whole life, and I'm working on like boundaries and oh, yeah, I'm like, I'm going to Crone, crone sometime. And chosen family stuff. 

 Vignette 18: Art & Self Love

I couldn't let myself make art until I learned how to love myself and love my body. Like I had hated my body my whole life until kind of recently. So, learning how to love my body is the only way I could let myself make art, and I feel like most people might not understand like the connection between those two. Because I feel like, you know, self hatred had taken up all my energy. And then once I could let go of the self hatred, I could do so many other things. So, I'm really really really grateful that I could do all the things that I did to learn to love my body. And that that mostly has to do with fatness. But it does also have to do with disability and queerness and transness. It was all mixed together, like my self hate was all mixed together. So then once I could, like, cut out the media that portrays fat people as horrible. And once I could, you know, choose ... choose fat yoga or make all these little ... do all these little things or big thing to learn that all bodies are valid and I'm OK. Then I could make art and then once I could make art then I could be happy. So. So I feel like faith and community and making art is really what's saved my life and made it meaningful. So I'm grateful for all those things. My mom was the person I was closest to other than my spouse. And then we had like, a really tight relationship and talked a lot, but when my mom died, then a lot of scrutiny and judgment left my life. And for the first time I wore a tank top outside, as an adult, like like there had been such harsh especially sexuality, bodily and fatness shame put on me through example and explicitly that ... you know, it's really sad that it took my mom's death for me to feel free. But because she would have loved to see me happy. But. I think that probably happens to other people sometimes too. 

 Vignette 19: Being Photographed

And then, once my mom died and I got my trike, I started an experiment of letting myself be photographed. Because I had not let myself be photographed for really for like a long time. But I asked my spouse, will you take a picture of me every day when we go on our trike ride. And so I started wearing clothes that actually I had some style to it, or I had literally just ... I had literally wished I was ahead, and I had literally treated clothing as wretched chore, horrible, pointless and more things until they were rats. And then once I started this experiment riding trike and being photographed. Then I started buying interesting clothing so and like and also I didn't really shop for clothes like. They were all given to me mostly by my mom. So for the first time I was buying clothes. And so that was that was a big part of the learning and transformation. So that was five years ago. 

 Vignette 20: Understanding Trans

Because I had thought maybe I wasn't trans because I love my body and I wasn't disappointed really in my parts. I didn't understand what trans was because I had heard this rumor that you had to, like, hate your body to be trans. But then, so it was really great that I could learn that I could be trans how I am. And that my gender isn't in my parts like my gender is something else. So all these like layered truths, uh, are coming together in my life and just grateful for accepting myself as I am. I have an NB therapist and I said to my therapist. ohh like I don't think I'm really trans because I like my my body. And they were explaining to me oh no, that's like ... I think they were explaining that's if you want the medicine, you might need to say that. But if I don't want want the medicine, I don't need to say that. Yeah, I think I loved myself into allowing myself to admit that I'm trans.