falter.fallible.fallacious.

my friend was attacked tonight, on school property. a group of young black guys beat him up; he lost a tooth, and his sense of safety. but walking home, i was still more afraid of the cops on campus than of being the next victim. as a person of color who gets read as a teenage boy, as a transguy, as a victim of police brutality, violence backed by the state is the kind that most frightens me.

see, that is what police brutality has done to me, it has completely removed my ability to believe that the police can, or intend to, serve and protect.

when i told my mother i was suing the city of saint paul, she told me she didn't understand why i was getting involved, since i got of 'pretty much scot-free'. and i teared up as i tried to express just how untrue that was. because getting of scot-free means more than just avoiding a record and some jail time. scot-free means avoiding panic every time you see a cop even though you aren't guilty of anything because, hey, you weren't guilty when the gassed you either. getting off scot-free means not being afraid to call the cops when somebody smashes your car window because you think they'll see you for the queer anarchist protester you are. getting off scot-free means getting to think that a permanent record is the only lasting effect of police brutality.

so, i've been home for nine days, although it feels like a lot longer.

it's strange to call this place home when i've spent so little time here this year and spent so much time in the past refusing to, or unable to, let galesburg be my home. maybe i just needed to get away, really away, to feel like this was someplace worth coming back to.

i've been thinking about what makes a home home this year, even more than before (which is a lot). in part because i, for the first time in my life, got to move to a new place of my choosing, not just in attending school, but in choosing to stay in saint paul for the summer. when i was looking at schools, i wasn't just looking for a good college, i wanted a place that could feel like home, and saint paul has lived up to that potential.

i've also been thinking about this because my mom mentioned a few days ago that she was ready to leave. she and my father have always planned to leave after my sister graduates from college and we have both moved out, and i always supported this. i guess because my own departure seemed less possible if they were still here, or maybe because i needed them to regret the move, to hate galesburg as much as i did. but now, the thought of them leaving makes me sad.

no matter how much i hated growing up here, no matter how much this place reminds me of things i regret and people i miss, i haven't been able to stop thinking about it. galesburg has so much to do with who i am, the idea of having no reason to return here is scary.

if new families live in all the houses my family has called home, if my parents live somewhere i have never lived, if i build a life somewhere separate from all of my roots, i have nothing except myself. i just become this apocryphal boy who has lost all of his homes and...

i don't know. it seems stupid, or more just inconvenient and frustrating, that after eighteen years, i still don't know what it means to be home. i still don't know what to say when people ask me where i'm from or where i grew up, and i feel more than ever like i'll never be able to answer them.

fuck this reads depressing. it's not supposed to be, but everything i write ends up so 'poor me'. i guess because whenever i'm feeling up i don't want to slow down to write about it.

it's been nearly three years since i've updated this, or any other, online journal.
maybe now that livejournal has been deserted by nearly all the people who mattered to me, who judged me, it feels safe again, because this is so much less public.

i need a place to get all this shit out where i won't feel compelled to write to an audience but i won't just be writing down the things i can't stop thinking about either. i'm hoping this can be some sort of happy medium.

i could start a new journal, again, but this is already my third, and i'm past the point of trying to convince myself that a new screen name means a new start. i'm not the girl i was (pretending to be) three years ago, but the boy that i am now owes so much to that person and so i'm trying to reconcile my past and present, in more ways than just that.


in three days, i will return to galesburg for a month. the first month i will have spent there since january. and january really fucked me up.

i'm good at leaving, and i love arriving, but i've recently discovered that i'm absolute shit at returning. going home (and galesburg has started to feel both more and less like home since i've left), feels like i'm returning the scene of a crime that in some ways i committed and in some ways was committed against me.

the houses of the friends i used to have and the school i still hate, the lake where i made some of the worst decisions of my life and the target i can't visit without running into someone who still sees me as someone i haven't been in a very long time.

going back to the location of my teenage rebellion compels me to revisit it. despite the fact that i'm at college, that i have lived on my own and am a legal adult, i return to these adolescent ways of flipping off the world. in january i drove around with my music blasting, recklessly pulling away from the high school to prove to all those kids who i pitied but was still intimidated by that i didn't give a fuck.

not this time. this time i'm going to prove to myself if not to them that galesburg doesn't have to make me sixteen again. so these are my resolutions for my return:

-no smoking
-no drinking
-no aimless driving by myself
-no responding to my old name without telling people my new one
-no looking at pictures from high school

i'm not sure i can go back without drowning in self-destructive nostalgia, but i'm going to do my damnedest.

Comment and I'll give you a letter. Then you have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter. After, post this in your journal and give out some letters of your own.

i have a t

1- tilly and the wall
2- time travel
3- techies
4- theater
5- thunder storms
6- tea parties
7- trotsky
8- tannenbaum
9- the royal tennenbaums
10- target

while she was holding hands and
filling hearts i called myself alone
and i wished for someone even though i
had you

and we can blame it on my queer sexuality and
heteronormative dreams as i
know you do or we could
blame it on our empty hands and i'm sorry

i couldn't love you like i wanted to
like i want you to but
love is destructive flawed and fleeting
i am destructive flawed and fleeting

my mom just took me on a snow-driving lesson. now i feel like a true midwesterner.
the 10-ish inches we got is more snow than we've had in the five years i've lived here.
when i was little and we'd go to wisconsin to visit my grandparents, i felt like snow was the greatest thing in the world. they have a farm and my grandpa uses the machines to plow the snow into giant piles like ones you see in supermarket parking lots. my cousins and i would carve nooks and crannies into these piles, forms rooms and houses to huddle in until we could no longer feel our fingers and toes. we were never much for the snowball fights, and snowmen didn't work too well, but those houses became towns, whole new worlds. and maybe its global warming, but even in wisconsin there never seems to be as much snow. or maybe its just age and i notice it less.
today i felt like building up an igloo, but i didn't want to ruin the smooth surface. when i was little i didn't think like that, i knew the more snow would come. but now i see the road side slush and i'm not so sure.

they called her too creative with her
free verse thought
poetic rebellion she is a
literary rouge a
rebel without rhyme
oh but she has every reason for her
angry girl sad song
she cries words into a river
too deep to ford
she smiles big like a woolf
slipping stones into her hands, her heart
weighted down and stepping in

it took months to get that hand
from your lap to mine
and it still sits awkward
we fake nonchalance looking anywhere
anywhere but there.
our story is verbal no
tribal dances physical romances
are for film
our story is not told in its
technicolor glory it is left in
notebook poetry and late night calls
LCD screens fight with graphite gray,
your pen black ink,
not for control but truth
no technicolor glory just a true story

i'm on my grandmother's computer (complete with state of the art dial-up) so this will be short.

i've been spending a lot more time with julia and brittany. while brittany and i are kind of growing apart, julia and i are becoming a lot closer. we really are so similar its scary sometimes.

i leave for chicago tomorrow to sew some coustumes. we have our first dress rehersal on sunday so i finally get to see les miz in its completion. i'm excited to see the whole story being told, and to see all the props and such.

i'll update some poetry soon, but now its family time.

i wanted this journal to be different, but i guess i just haven't changed enough.
in psych we learned about seasonal affective disorder. sometimes its comforting to know there's an exact medical term for what you feel. in this case its not. the back of my wrists was criss-crossed with thin little scars last week, but it didn't make it that much better.
i got my liscense though and i've been driving a lot. it really is one of the best things in the world.

i'm running the fly system for beauty and the beast, then right after that closes i'm make-up head for MASH. i'm glad to be back in theater. as much fun as all state is, its different. almost like it doesn't count.

i'm hoping it will help cheer me up a bit, being busy with elective activities. i may say more later, but i feel that this is going to become more of a poetry journal again.