the mEp

"we ran into her just by chance;
i saw it in a single glance
my oldest friend,
your new romance
must i remember?

you couldn't run;
she couldn't hide
she dropped her eyes,
you turned aside
you didn't want to hurt my pride,
but you knew that...

Love is a Rush of Wild Wind;
The Scent of a Sumemr Rose
A whistle blowing on a distant track
and when it goes, it goes

I know that tale I've heard it told
How bruises reach down to the soul
A love once warm, turns icy cold
And I know that

Love is a Rush of Wild Wind;
The Scent of a Sumemr Rose
A whistle blowing on a distant track
and when it goes, it goes

Take your heart where it longs to be
I won't bind you to a memory
I know if I wait,
it will happen to me oh ho"

-Maya Angelou,Roberta Flack, & Barry Miles

it is halloween.
my creative juices spawn a sitting here.

October 17 1999

i am becoming female.
thirty-four years after God made me that way,
some of the loose edges that have defined me
as less than your average stereotypical woman
are beginning to slough off.
in a whirlwind tour of over-male karma,
my - forgive me for saying this - but me
'weaker' side has begun to come to light,
and to my life in a very real way.
i say weaker because i don't see this change,
these changes, as positive, well yet.
forgive me for that too, but when you have
lived your whole life obviously FEMALE yet
completely oblivious to any real differences,
becoming female is a serious disadvantage.

i had male role models. in fact, my earliest childhood
imaginary friend (who was, in fact, also myself)
was a powerful and famous male detective who
owned and ran a huge detective agency single-handedly.
then i studied forensics from library books,
applying makeup at all the right ages, but only ever
as entertainment and embellishment, never as something
that was to be a part of my life. it was outside of me.
inside of me was someone with goals, dreams, frustrations
and a point to make.
and most of all, someone who never saw herself
as disadvantaged by her femaleness.

that vantage point is priceless.

aside from judy rosenswig, and a woman named susan burgess
whom i invented a non-existent close relationship with,
the teachers who influenced me most were men.

i took a Univeristy degree in the sciences because the career-path i had initially chosen turned out to be a
dead-end and boring option for me. cooincidental? 90%
of my classmates were female. i ended up in a University
research lab spending mornings fighting off the glares
of a certain female student, and afternoons bonding
with two of the 'lab men' - two men more different on
the outside but each so warm and lonely on the inside...
i guess that the female student may have been lonely
as well, but she wasn't ready to share that with me.

perhaps particularly emoti-senso men are attracted to me,
and women who lack self-confidance, bothered by me.

so that started my life with men. most of my close
female friends had moved to other cities by that time,
and i spent a very long time feeling quite distant
and missing, the kinds of female closeness i had
shared in my youth.

i learned the harsh reality of what it means to be
a woman, from a purely intellectual standpoint,
during my reign at a local pharmaceutical firm.
there, i learned alot about alot of things i didn't
want to know. the slow, painful, hard way. but i
learned 'em. i learned 'em good.

still unphased, undaunted, and unabashed with
this knowledge, i continued my path toward world
leader.

and then, all of a sudden, completely out
of the blue but probably almost entirely related
to my 34-ishness, i feel female.

perhaps my current job has micro-accelerated the
process. watching men more closely than ever,
what motivates them, what excites them,
all of a sudden it is something i cannot deny.
i am no longer interested in wavelengths of data
transmission.
and now i see evidence of our differences
all over the place. i watch them peer into
bicycle parts, fascinated by the mechanics.

it is telling me that i need to gravitate
towards femaleness a little bit more.

TO BE CONTINUED

i still hate watching these dates climb;
further and further into tomorrow

October 13 1999

some fear you can never know.
at the first awake of the mind
the music is playing - a familiar
sound comes through, but is this
place familiar to me?
who is that stranger waking me up?
where am i? is my safety blanket near or far?
i'm lying in my own bed but where am i?
Am I alive? Am I really on the same planet
as everyone I know, if they are not a short
drive away? Fear must certainly be innate
for this pampered baby to feel it...
so deeply.
and now, months and months later,
close to them all, and far away from
Ventura boulevards and rolling canyons,
now, i know those fears.
they don't leave easily, they are deep,
and they will most likely affect
everything I do, everything I am, for the
rest of my life.
and the fear takes away a small part of the love
i fear.

i bumped into a friend in traffic yesterday;
rushhour, it was, in our cars, we were.
we did a sort of double-take,
each with our new hair, as it was hair day,
yesterday was.
someone asked did we damage our cars,
but we laughed to see someone we know so well
in cars.
she looked beautiful, my friend did,
encased in navy-blue metallic, as she laughed
from the soul, to see me there.
we exchanged newses and she followed me home.
i have some very beautiful friends.

good morning in the darkness of this day;
good morning to you.