It's Easter 2015 and I'm surprised that I'm still here. I concede that that is a multi-level statement and I should elaborate. When I was a younger human, posing as a male, I never entertained the thought that I would live this long, not long in current human longevity standards anyway. Halfway into transition I realized that I'd signed away any assets that would enable me to complete the journey. I don't believe in trying to reconstruct the bridges burned so I was left with a sense of winding down to the inevitable end. Unfortunately or fortunately, whichever you prefer, I have reclaimed part of my past life as a means of continuing this new one. It's not a happy one by any means but it enables me to still be here. All this must confuse those who put a high value on still being alive. I'm not one of them. I've entwined myself with others who now depend on my continuation. That is the only reason I don't end it as you read this. My talents are a culmination of teachings left to me by other humans, past and present. I have no desire to leave these teachings kept from others deemed worthy of this knowledge. So I continue to work and teach. Being here, however, in my present form, sucks. I am transgender and can't do anything about that but I don't have to like it. Believe me, it was so much nicer to live as a white male with white male privilege but that's the past. This is reality and if I wasn't as tough and resilient as I am, you wouldn't be reading this. Quoting Walter Cronkite, "that's the way it is". Now I live in a progressive community that seems for the most part to treat me as an equal human except for the daily "double takes and mis-gendendering comments" that a trans-person has to deal with. I pass these off and pretend I'm not bothered by it, otherwise I'd lose the clients that I need to stay in business. But I have to say here, and this is a BIG but, musicians are the exception and I have NEVER been maligned or disrespected by my friends in the music world. There seems to be a non-bias aspect to being a musician. A language that transcends discrimination. These people are another reason why I stay here. Then there are my children. How can I just quit being when they are still here for me to connect with. I have experienced the loss of my parents and as I know that is a "right of passage" in the human experience, I would rather that it happen by natural causes than by my own efforts. The last part of this rant, I suppose, is to my friends who practice ceremonial rites during this time. I applaud you for your adherence to tradition but I beg you to consider the reality of human existence in this time. It is dire. There needs to be a new paradigm in our goals as human and it does not lie in the beliefs of the past. Please look forward. Look at your children. Is this the world you want them to inherit? We can be so much more. Look to the stars. If I had the power, I would make it all right but I don't. I'm just one flawed human. Good luck.

Such a lazy mouse. Nothing to say? This lack of writing is not a good omen. Well, something has come up to bring me back to the keyboard. A ghost of the past has come to haunt. It's no news that my transition came with a great loss of family and friends. Besides my three children, I can count on one hand the family members who stayed supportive to me and still have fingers left. The rest let me fall off the cliff and ran off before they could hear the thud of my impact with the rock bottom. I didn't have the energy to feel betrayed or to even wonder why at the time. Transition rips you open and turns you inside out, with everything you've ever felt laying bare on the grimy sidewalk, but you know that already or you wouldn't be reading my blog. It gets ugly. Now, after ten years, one of the detached has chosen to contact via social media with no explanation as to why. Just jumping into conversation as if I'd lost the memory of the last decade. Is this a probe? . . . to see if I am amicable to this re-connection? . . . do I hold no grudge? . . . is it "water under the bridge" and all that? I'm perplexed and confounded. So far, I've been cordial in my response but I find myself becoming bothered by it. My survival of the aforementioned ugly mess was aided by my acceptance of loss. Those who let me fall made that choice in their own interest and fear of the repercussions that come with an alliance to a social outcast as I was. Done and done. I survived, eventually, with the aid of true friends and allies and I now have more good people around me than ever before in my life. and a cat. always a cat. Suitable for a Jedi-Mouse. I think that an explanation of why should precede a reaching out a decade later by someone who was willing to watch you die. Yes?, no?, maybe? . . . I'll ask the cat.

Arise from the ashes, Jedi-Mouse. It's time to talk again. My left big toe doesn't bend anymore due to having been broken twice from surfing incidents. It's only a minor pain but it's a constant reminder of a past life. I went to a transgender support event today and lasted twenty minutes before I had to leave out of boredom, frustration, disgust and a heaping pile of self-hatred. I went to support a friend who is a comedienne and was scheduled to perform but I couldn't last until her slotted set. I sat through an unbearably trivial dissertation by various tran-men prose which left me depressed beyond measure. That's too many "I"s so let's get to the matter. Walking home in the rain, realizing yes, I was tripping on a mushroom cap because I thought it would put me in a better place to endure the distaste I was about to feel but it had the opposite effect making me feel by the power of ten the self-hatred I have for being transgender. It's a hard thing to admit but long overdue. It took several snifters of bourbon and four episodes of "House" before I could even start writing. Not all of me has survived transition. The warrior mouse lives on as well as the artist, the musician, the jester . . . but the person is broken. Now "she", she is terrified, alone and self-destructive. Too many regrets, too many losses. Land locked and drying out like a beached dogfish. I can't smell the ocean anymore. I can't find the me that was suppose to be there. What a freakish thing to live a fifty year lie, to be an actor and watching life play out through false eyes. "What a world, what a world" was the cry as the life of fifty years of experience that equaled ten ordinary lives dissolved into a pool of water. "Where are my tits!" cries Myra Breckinridge waking up from surgery . . . All my references are ancient by today's trans standards. I won't be on the cover of Time. Amazon won't be showing a series of my life, however similar to today's version. My life is over. What's left is a remnant, a ghost of a life that had so much potential in it that it can carry on without the person in it. I'll play that out, whatever is left, until it too dissolves.

Another long absence.

I must be the poster child for clinical depression for skipping time in such fashion. Hibernation is not just for the bears. As much as I try to be part of the daily social routine I cannot. Why is it so important to be seen as a functioning normal human when you are anything but. Yet, my dark side is no one's problem but my own so why do I wish to relate it to anyone? Good question. I write to prove I am? Maybe but I think there is more to it. I think it is an attempt at self-healing, to expunge bad humors without having the aid of leeches. So, in fact, I'm writing to myself. A fact-check memo to a self-loathing entity. Poor mouse, courageous to the end. Fighting the good fight yet never gaining an inch. What is the limit to altruism? Everyone has unfulfilled needs. Does that mean it is my place to aid everyone I come in contact with? Hardly, I think, yet everyone affects me. Empathy is a curse. The mercenary has it right, pay up front. Self-preservation is the only raison-d'etre. There lies the real problem, that self-preservation thing. Shall we rehash the details?; I am a transsexual mouse, knowing from as long as I can remember that I was born in the wrong body. Timing for that was terrible, society was an absolute binary - man, woman,(preferably white). A boy-child expressing feminine thoughts was to be beaten or worse. I learned to adapt, becoming what they (parents) wanted to see but never bonding as a real person. Such a burden to play the role of the opposite until it became the norm. What a ruse to believe in the actor knowing all along you are insane. Until I was fifty years old I played that role and so abruptly the play ended. A few messy years sorting out the what-am-Is, losing everyone you loved and who you imagined loved you, not to mention everything you worked for, then being summarily dismissed. If there is a place below "rock-bottom" I certainly lived there for a couple of years then slowly climbed back up to street level society. I used what talents I retained from before the fall to build a new persona and found a way to maintain a poverty existence but never able to afford the changes I need to feel human again. In raw terms, no one understands a woman with a penis or even wants to, let alone fight for change in a medical system that sees no need in caring for such a person. I'm getting tired of this life. No, I don't need an intervention, I need a change of location. It's time to go back to the ocean. I need the smells and sounds of shore life. That's what I'll live for.

The Mouse has returned! I had a few things to think about and spent a year doing just that. The experiment that was the United States of America has "jumped the shark". The corporatards and banker elites who were kept at bay until the Reagan presidency have regained control in such an overwhelming manner that it is time to push the Reset button and start over. All branches of our government have been sold to the highest bidder. Intellect has been demonized by the ruling .01%; The uneducated religious zealots have been conditioned to support the ultra-conservative, puppets of the rich, psuedo-representatives we call congressmen and senators at the expense of their own well being. Profit is god at the expense of the earth and its inhabitants; perpetual war is the business model of the new world economy. We thought a black president would change the paradigm. It did not. Protest is now un-American. Telling the truth about our governments' lies and illegal actions is now treason. Security of those in power trumps the Constitution. Democracy is dead. The permanent corporate fascist oligarchy will remain no matter how you vote. It's time to retreat. Go back to the commune. Grow your own food. Learn to hide. Practice peace but learn to defend yourselves. Keep libraries. Live as though the world was collapsing around you, because it is. Practice your art, play music, write music, write stories, tell stories, learn to survive. I never though it would come to this, really. Good was supposed to overcome evil but it didn't. Not yet, anyway. I would like to think positive, that today's technology will unite us and give us a communal voice that will make a difference, that the internet will remain free and knowledge shared by everyone. Let's continue to evolve just to piss them off.

Returning Soon!

Jedi Mouse has been away training, meditating and rejuvenating. She will be back soon with new thoughts and rantings about our human condition.

Ex-father's Day

There's this thing about transsexualism, you know, being your "true self", not living in denial anymore, the "real you" and all that. . . it's crap. Oh, don't get me wrong, there's no getting out of it, you will have to transition at some point or another if you don't kill yourself first, that is if you are indeed a true transsexual. At least these days there is enough acceptance and medical support that the transitions are happening at a much, much younger age, well before a person goes through several lifetimes of trying to be "normal" and leaving a trail of broken hearts, betrayed loves and enough baggage to fill the holds of a jumbo jet.
For the "old ones", like myself, the holidays are the harshest reminders of that lost life, even if it was a life in denial. At least there were Hallmark cards and presents. I miss it. I liked being a father on Father's Day. There was acknowledgement and affection for just being who I was to someone. Although my children are still close to me I am no longer a father in the iconic holiday sense and it was way too late in their lives for them to ever consider me an alternate "Mother". So I'm left without a parental holiday . . . Transparent Day? . . . no, I think they'd easily see through that, pun intended.
What am I getting at here and yes, I'm asking myself this, . . . what? Am I questioning whether it was worth it? . . . being yourself knowing you could lose family and everything you've worked for up to then? Most of the time I say yes to myself, the pain is the price for being real . . . but on holidays that come with too many memories I think maybe not, it's taking more bourbon to get through each one.

So, here's to transitioning young, and the younger the better. As for me, if I could jump back in time to the inevitable crossroads of "be who you really are, or don't be" . .. . knowing what I know now . . . I wouldn't.