Not so much a walk as a stomp.
Our friend Zil was pleased to see Trouble when she clopped her way over there. Good. We like Zil. She's worth the effort. And we must be known as we truly are, by someone, or we'll have no hope at all.
We've been reading Middlesex. It's a fantastic book. Jeffry Eugenides. A heroine turns hero. Intersex. Calliope becomes Cal. Girl becomes boy, then man. It's a topic of some interest to us for many reasons, one being that some of us believe ourselves to be male. If not men, then not women either. Some who live here, like the Herrings, have no ambiguity at all - are men. We tend not to count them. They seem to be ghosts who just moved in and started bossing Mannie around. Or perhaps they came with her, in her magical bag. (It's bigger on the inside, you know.)
Trouble is currently claiming the gender 'tomboy', and admiring Poppy Brite's attitude towards the situation that she finds herself in. Trouble's a non-nonsense kind of girl-boy - likes the way that Poppy handles gender dysphoria. Knowing we could never pass as man. Knowing most of us are women, and glad to be women. And since s/he's not a man in any case, but an eight year old boy, Trouble doesn't want to bother too much with claiming pronouns or taking testosterone. Eight year old boys don't have much of that either. Still, she doesn't walk so much as stomp.
Mama Lion raised her. Well, there's an ambiguity. I never noticed that before. We always come with clues.
I wonder sometimes... maybe they were right after all - with their theories about an uber-person who knows it all, knows all about us, knows everyone of us - IS everyone of us.
All that garbage just because they can't accept a bit of difference. It's things like the clues that make me doubt myself. Who's watching all of us? Who's in charge? Is it The Machine that Viola sees - full of levers and crazy lights? Or some kind of energy field (that's what Calypso sees). Is it a soup of chopped up identities borrowed from relatives, friends, storybooks? Am I a meaningless expression of something that isn't really a person at all, just a delusion who thinks her name is Thea and knows herself to be a dark-haired lesbian? Well maybe... but if I'm a delusion, then so are you, I say, with bravado but I also fear. What if I'm really not a person? What if there's no real person? What if we're so god help me damaged somehow that we're no longer a real person? Like that crazy man in the old people's home who used to say nothing but "Come from Hamburg" and didn't even recognise his wife. Where did he go? The person he was before that's all he was? Did we have a person who has left our body? Are we just a more sophisticated kind of question?
Okay, I'm done here.
If you're still reading, I salute you.
We've been reading Middlesex. It's a fantastic book. Jeffry Eugenides. A heroine turns hero. Intersex. Calliope becomes Cal. Girl becomes boy, then man. It's a topic of some interest to us for many reasons, one being that some of us believe ourselves to be male. If not men, then not women either. Some who live here, like the Herrings, have no ambiguity at all - are men. We tend not to count them. They seem to be ghosts who just moved in and started bossing Mannie around. Or perhaps they came with her, in her magical bag. (It's bigger on the inside, you know.)
Trouble is currently claiming the gender 'tomboy', and admiring Poppy Brite's attitude towards the situation that she finds herself in. Trouble's a non-nonsense kind of girl-boy - likes the way that Poppy handles gender dysphoria. Knowing we could never pass as man. Knowing most of us are women, and glad to be women. And since s/he's not a man in any case, but an eight year old boy, Trouble doesn't want to bother too much with claiming pronouns or taking testosterone. Eight year old boys don't have much of that either. Still, she doesn't walk so much as stomp.
Mama Lion raised her. Well, there's an ambiguity. I never noticed that before. We always come with clues.
I wonder sometimes... maybe they were right after all - with their theories about an uber-person who knows it all, knows all about us, knows everyone of us - IS everyone of us.
All that garbage just because they can't accept a bit of difference. It's things like the clues that make me doubt myself. Who's watching all of us? Who's in charge? Is it The Machine that Viola sees - full of levers and crazy lights? Or some kind of energy field (that's what Calypso sees). Is it a soup of chopped up identities borrowed from relatives, friends, storybooks? Am I a meaningless expression of something that isn't really a person at all, just a delusion who thinks her name is Thea and knows herself to be a dark-haired lesbian? Well maybe... but if I'm a delusion, then so are you, I say, with bravado but I also fear. What if I'm really not a person? What if there's no real person? What if we're so god help me damaged somehow that we're no longer a real person? Like that crazy man in the old people's home who used to say nothing but "Come from Hamburg" and didn't even recognise his wife. Where did he go? The person he was before that's all he was? Did we have a person who has left our body? Are we just a more sophisticated kind of question?
Okay, I'm done here.
If you're still reading, I salute you.
posted by Polysemous at 7:23 PM
2 Comments:
Shouldn't this be in Had a Dolly?
Just Jo.
Well maybe, but that colour scheme makes me think it's Trouble's blog and this one feels more peacocky. This is Castle Business, and I never leave the Castle.
Thea
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