Backyard Burns

I'm obsessed. I can't get enough. I light up my firetoys at any and every conceivable opportunity. Like Friday night at J's party and Saturday night in my own backyard. Sunday night after leaving practice for the Element 11 fireshow, I stopped by Chicory's place and played some more in their driveway. Having already spun my new heavy poi for two hours in practice, I was a little off my game, but whatever. My fire addiction knows few bounds, it seems.

K took the photo above and posted more to her blog here.

***

Peering in the Rearview

Lately I've been gaining perspective on a particularly predominant storyline over the past twelve years of my life. I encountered Teafaerie, with whom I share several commonalities, and had the opportunity to tell that story to someone who didn't have preconceived notions, not knowing any of the players. In some ways, it was a little strange to tell such a personal story to a virtual stranger, but it was also quite liberating. From what I know of this person, she is very open and generous, and it felt okay being so forthright.

It was wonderful, to look back and tell the whole thing, from a brief overview of my first boyfriend at age 17, to coming out, to meeting B and practicing polyamory, to getting married, to meeting K and living in a poly family for four years, to extricating myself from that family and all the consequent emotions, realizations, and growth.

The messages I wrote were long, getting the whole story out, and I suppose in some ways my motivation for writing them was highly self-interested. I just needed some outside motivation to get me to sit down and really look at it from a birds-eye. My perspective right now feels very solid, and I'm noticing things about the way my body reacts to different scenarios and interactions. I'm paying attention to what works and what doesn't work for me. I'm feeling not only accountable for what has been but also willing and excited to make new kinds of choices for the future. I am eschewing regret and sorrow for choices and choosing instead to learn from has been and create my reality afresh.

Were some event to unfold at any moment and my life were to end, I have lived an amazing, incredible life. I have learned, I have loved, and the living just gets better and better.

As sappy as these kinds of posts sound, they are an accurate reflection of where I am. And to realize how far I've traveled on this journey makes me profoundly glad.

Blessed Life! I'm enjoying the view in the rearview, but even more excited to see what lies ahead, what I create for myself.

Infatuation

I am completely and utterly in love with this dog.
(many thanks to K for sending me these pics via cameraphone!)

Time Spiralizer

The three years it took me to finish my juris doctor flew by. Flew. Where did they go? It feels like yesterday that I was bemoaning my stress-induced cold sore on my first day of law school orientation week. And now I'm out, facing a bar exam in July, heavily indebted, and more disillusioned about The System than ever before. Nevertheless, these years have brought about a host of changes, internally and externally for me. I'm learning to open my throat chakra, to tell myself Truth so that I can be genuinely honest with others. I left the marriage/partnership/family that took me on my journey through my twenties. I learned to hold my tongue. I learned to listen, even when I had a LOT to say in response to what I was hearing. I learned to change my mind. I started to smile and laugh more than ever (this was despite law school, not because of it). I learned how to play with fire. I remembered that I am fun and that I deserve to be happy.

After my last final, I headed to the desert for five days. Moving to the Northwest in ten short weeks, I knew my opportunities for redrock mystery and wonder were limited, and I thoroughly enjoyed the hot days and chilly nights and of course spinning fire under a rising full moon.

Life is truly a grand and glorious blessing.

Oh, bummer! The photoCD from my latest trip has a huge heat bubble and won't read on my computer! I will have to get J in Alaska to send me another disk with the images so I can post some of my favorites from that trip here. In the mean time, here are a few shots of my fireplay at the graduation party at my house ...




This one is the lovely Gypsie in the foreground with me in back. (Thanks, Jeff!)

Things I'll Miss

I love where I live. For years I chafed at living here, only seeing the less-than-stellar aspects of this place. But now? I love it. And I'm leaving. These are things two I'll miss: this amazing geography and the City Library.

Edits, Transitions, and Evolutions

I set this whole blog aside for the better part of a year. When I re-read some of the stuff I've written, especially stuff last spring, I have to fight the compulsion to delete posts outright. Like the Commitment post from a year ago. Why would I feel compelled to delete? Because where I am, the ways I identify, how I live my life - these things shift. So while I'm not going to take the time right now to write about polyamory, commitment, and how I fit within those things, I did feel compelled to say that bottom line: I'm committed to being myself. To looking myself in the eye in the mirror every morning. To living as honorably as I know how.

And you know what? Celibacy isn't so bad, either. If there's anything I've learned for sure this past year, that would be it.

I've always loved this quote by Ntozake Shange:

i found god in myself & i loved her
i loved her fiercely

NightBeachFire

After driving twelve hours to Portland during the first weekend of spring break, I picked up my friend Melinda and we continued on another two hours to the coast. I spun fire all night long as the rain misted around us, soaking my wicks, and I burned up an entire gallon of white gas. Though my technique is rusty and I'm grossly out of practice, spinning fire through the night while the surf raged and surged behind me and the rain fell softly and the wind made the flames dance -- this was exactly what I needed.

fire fire fire

Click here for more from that day by another photographer.

.. Fluid

atoms
rearrange

shifting

auditioning novel configurations

entire regions infused with pain-memory
re fresh
re lease
re new
re form

so
i explore
the New World
inside my skin

Sex Reading

A few articles I've recently enjoyed & favorite quotes:

Asexuality
"This is where many folks out there in TV land might have trouble believing asexuality is not cover for something else. So you can masturbate and still call yourself asexual?"

G Spot
"A few doctors have argued this spot lacks any of the special mythological powers attributed to it - it's like the Bermuda Triangle of female anatomy."

Changing Castro
"A woman [was] upset about a Buddhist god with a very large penis."

Genderqueer
"Seahorses are bona fide genderfuckers."

Bisexuality on the Rise
"The more they like sex, the more women like women."

Buckled

Buckled. As in, buckle down. Just crawling in from my last big party night until finals are over. Two and a half more weeks until the end of my 2L year; a staggering amount of work to accomplish in a mere seventeen days.

And so, another quote from that eerie daily horoscope:

The Sun and Pluto, holding hands, are chorusing: “You can’t keep a good Aries down.” Whether it’s (whatever “it” is) the call of the wild or a megamerger, chances are that it will be way too strong to resist or ignore.

Commitment

Anyone who thinks that polyamory is somehow divested of commitment should live inside my head for a day. An hour might even be sufficient. This wee-hours-post is me saying that my embodiment of polyamory takes commitment.

The commitment is philosophical. The commitment is emotional. The commitment is sometimes wrenching. And yet I persist. Am I just stubborn? Deluded? Too idealistic for my psychological and emotional well-being?

At the risk of sounding like an unrealistic hippie (perhaps an apt characterization in light of what follows), living my truth is the only way I can look myself in the eye through the mirror, and what makes gazing in others' eyes comfortable. My truth is fluid, evolving, and I wrestle every day with being honest with my views and their application to the minutiae of mundane choices that create my life.

And for a little more hippie-talk, I've come to realize, in lessons building to a crescendo over the past year, that my capacity for love is tremendous. Greater than I ever knew possible.

And yet, in this moment, I feel a profound sadness. There are two people for whom I care - someone I've loved for a long time and someone I've only very recently known with growing fondness - who feel unsure and doubtful polyamory is the right lovestyle for them. I would never want, nor presume, to change how anyone lives and loves. But vague uncertainty drains a bit, leaving me slightly worn and raw. Exposed.

These, for me, are the challenging moments of polyamory.

Franklin has a great website, so I looked there for guidance, understanding, comfort, something with which I could relate. "Poly relations for monogamous people" doesn't seem to quite catch the nuance of the various poly-resistant relations and interactions I'm currently experiencing, whether it's changing perceptions of a poly-self, or misgivings from the outset. "Things your partner wants you to know" has some good stuff that rang true, but not quite there either. "How to become a secure person" has something different to say to me, every time I read it. But ultimately, it was "Poly 101" that reminded me of what I needed to hear.

Writing this out has made me feel better. Mission accomplished.

Now I'm tired, on a bifurcated sleep cycle, and need to get a few hours of rest before getting up for another long day.

And an expectedly beautiful springtime day.

Catching Up

The new decade is already moving too quickly. These last weeks have included a string of very good academic and professional news, an excess of partying in celebration of that good news and my birthday, moving out of my house, thinking about trying to pull my nose above the quickly rising tide of schoolwork and work-work (and not quite doing it yet), negotiating how to restructure an evolving seven-year poly relationship, telling my parents I'm amicably divorcing that same partner this summer, and thoroughly enjoying a new interaction with someone I've had my eye on for awhile.

My festival week was fabulous, culminating in a celebration with about twenty friends at Ouida Lounge. One of my favorite things about Ouida's - besides the blue sky and clouds painting on the ceiling - is the hookah rentals. Oh yeah. Nothin' keeps me from smoking cigarettes like puffing on some apple-flavored tobacco.




And of course, here's the requisite daffodil, my birthday flower. Something about daffodils makes me glad to be alive. And something about snow on daffodils (which we got a few days later), tells me I'm home. Springtime in the Wasatch.


It's good to have left my twenties behind. I'm so over them.

Festival 30 Kick-Off

Although initially fraught with frustration and delays, the trip to Mystic Hot Springs ended up being a wonderful adventure. Soaking in warm water, celebrating Vernal Equinox, and seeing Kan'Nal in an intimate venue with eighty people was the perfect way to start the celebration week for my 30th and K's 27th birthdays.

J, O, and B drove down and soaked with us Sunday, Equinox-eve.

The Mysterious B ("When I was in Colorado I was George") is taking this photo.

Vernal Equinox Morn.


Aries grrl before the show, age 29.99178 .

The next morning, age 29.99452.

Rub dub dub.

Pre-Equinox Nostalgia

The planned travel to Mystic for our 4th annual Aries celebration has been delayed. Now we can't leave until tomorrow morning. Illness, old and new injuries, exhaustion, major vehicle frustration. This has been a weird trip from the beginning. We bumped it up a week to coincide with Kan'Nal's show Monday night. Usually we go after the 23rd and 24th, after K and I get to celebrate our actual birthdays. Lots of the regulars at these Aries gathering won't be there this year. Cycles. Inevitable change.

The goats played a big role that first year, in 2003. B and R, getting rather facial with the cloven footed creatures, S playing her guitar and singing to them. The goats have been relocated to another part of the property. And S is in Belize for spring break.

And I'm leaving for the odd beginning of my birthday-week-festival tomorrow morning. Instead of hours ago, as planned.

Thirty is visible. Less than a week away.

Tectonics & A Papier Mâché Piñata

Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Volcanoes. The tectonic plates of my world are shifting and groaning. The ground is shaking. I am readjusting, releasing old, slowly accumulated pressures.

That's one way to see it.

It's also like a big easter egg, a piñata, a papier mâché prison I've built around myself in patterns repeated for at a dozen years. Ultimately my prettily and painstakingly constructed egg became too oppressive and I'm bursting through, busting the chicken wire and the glue and the hardened paper. Breathing new air. Crawling out of the small space to stretch my legs and arms and back, and start moving. Growing. Expanding.

Whether it's tectonic shifts or the lovely thought of me being the prize in the piñata, change is afoot.

What's prompting such descriptions of Moss's inner realm? That strangely prophetically applicable sun sign horoscope I get in my email applies. I accept its implicit challenge.

Are you really prepared to travel further afield to ensure your expansion and growth? Or, on the grounds of familiarity, are you going to stick with the same-old, same-old, despite what you said about sticking with that choice?

P & P

Two P words that describe me (listed alphabetically since neither is more applicable than the other):

Perfectionist
Procrastinator

These two traits are terrifically unfortunate when they exert such an influence over my behavior simultaneously. (Which is why I find myself facing an all-nighter to meet a 9:00 am deadline.)

Oh, and just because the most recent sun-sign-general-good-advice made me smile, here's today's horoscope:

Don’t exit the stage quite yet. If you can just keep your options open until the Sun moves into your sign on the 20th, you stand an excellent chance of conjuring a delightful rabbit out of your hat.

We'll see about that whole rabbit business. And now I'm ruminating on what options I should keep open.

41

At first the rumormill said it was a massive heart attack. But that was an exaggeration. He was awake when they gave him the local anisthetic in his groin, cut him open, and snaked a shunt to his heart to open the blockage. Now he owes $20k. I told him his life is worth it. He is 41.

Who's Been Peeping In My Headspace?

Usually I just find sun-sign horoscopes funny. They are so generic they can apply to anyone. Basically just good advice, right? Right.

And I still think that.

And this new horoscope I've been getting is hitting the nail on the head lately. Hitting it pretty damn square. Pretty damn hard.

Should you be involved in arrangements that limit your self-expression, you probably have excellent, defensible reasons for hanging in there. However, your chafe marks are becoming increasingly obvious and pretty soon they’ll probably need some salve.

Now the concept of salve will be ever-present on my mind.

Note to Mister Shower: Don't worry. It won't be the greasy lavender body butter kind of salve.

Am I delirious?

Pesky Wisdom

Somehow these things are related.

My horoscope for today:

Whether you’ve been attempting to declare your position or playing your cards close to your vest, this is your moment. Make a case for your future plans, including the list of who is (and isn’t) welcome to accompany you.

and

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” – William Shakespeare

Evolve

Beauties of being a pedestrian & user of public transport:
1. I have no idea how much gas costs.
2. I watch the weather.

Going to Term(ination)

Okay, I admit it. I've become complacent in recent years about my pro-choice activism. But South Dakota's attack on the constitutionally-protected right to choose has the tiniest of tiny silver linings. NARAL: Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood are each getting a ridiculous pittance from my dwindling-too-soon-in-the-semester checking account. I'm clinging to the adage that every dollar helps.

This Denver Post article describing the extreme difficulty women already faced in South Dakota prior to the new sweeping criminal ban reminded me of my own state. According to the oh-so-pleasant American Death Camps website, Utah has three abortion clinics. (I had only been aware of two. Thanks for the good news, abortion foes!) All three clinics are within Salt Lake County. Meaning 96% of the counties in this state do not have an abortion clinic. [According to the site, there are five states with only one abortion provider: Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.]

Terminating a pregnancy in Utah is tough. Five years ago, a woman I know better than anyone else (yet somehow never well enough) went through the challenging and frustrating process of getting an abortion here. Although I can't find statutory explanation for this circumstance (and perhaps I'm forgetting the explanatory facts), she had to wait for several weeks after learning she was pregnant and had a very brief window of time during which she could submit to the procedure. The hassle was tremendous, but would have been much worse had she lived in any one of the 28 less fortunate Utah counties.

After getting an appointment, she had to take another day off work to go to the clinic two days before the planned abortion to receive the mandated "informed consent" (aka state-articulated you-are-killing-a-baby) lecture from an underenthused women's health worker complying with a law she despised, pick up the manipulative and expensive color glossy thirty-page printout with details of fetal development, and be given the state-produced try-to-convince-you-adoption-is-the-answer video. On the day of her termination, she thanked the doctor and nurses profusely for being willing to stand up for the rights of women. Given the difficulty she had in scraping together money to pay for the termination, she couldn't have afforded to go to a friendlier state as an alternative.

FOR ANYONE READING THIS WHO IS ANTI-CHOICE (a longshot, given the scant and known readership of this waste of my homework and sleeping time), would you be less upset about this abortion if you knew she was addicted to methamphetamine at the time?

This decision was wrenching for her. She had previously described herself as pro-choice. Yet she found the biological drive and the intensely positive feelings the pregnancy hormones induced may have clouded her judgment and affected her decision had she not been addicted to speed. She has often said that it was a blessing that her Unintended Pregnancy Lesson and her Drug Addiction Lesson coincided. Otherwise, she may have given birth and not experienced the Getting an Abortion in Utah Lesson. [Another day maybe I'll post the story of a close friend whose Drug Addiction, Abortion Attempt, and Unsuccessful Open Adoption Lessons converged.]

The irony? At the time of these intersecting lessons, her state-employee health insurance wouldn't pay for oral contraceptives. But two weeks after the bleeding stopped and her reproductive system started to re-boot, she received a check from her insurance companying covering 80% of her $380 abortion.
. . .

Is it just coincidence that those who criminalize abortion are overwhelming fat white men?

Rep. Roger Hunt, a sponsor of the [South Dakota]
bill, said momentum is building for a change in national policy on abortion.
(By Doug Dreyer -- Associated Press)

Email from my School Account

Missing

“The Swingline Long Reach Stapler”

Has been removed from the Copy Center

If you have any information regarding the location of the Stapler

Please contact the Copy Center.

Or if you have the Stapler please return it.

Thank you for your Assistance.

Execution & Exoneration

Medical ethics prevailed (at least momentarily) when two anesthesiologists refused to participate in Michael Angelo Morales' execution planned for 12:01 am this morning. Last week a judge ordered an anesthesiologist be on hand to intervene in the event Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain. The death warrant runs out at 11:59 pm tonight, so unless California manages to execute him by sedation before then, it is unlikely Morales will be put to death. The trial judge would have to re-issue the death warrant, a highly unlikely probability given that he supported Morales' plea for clemency to Governor Arnold earlier this month.

The family of Terri Winchell, who was 17 years old at the time she was raped and murdered twenty-five years ago, were clearly upset that the pain Morales may potentially experience would be a concern.

But the 8th Amendment applies to what actions the state may take. I realize that capital punishment is a difficult topic and there are highly divergent views. Do I condone the rape and murder of a 17-year-old? Of course not. But I absolutely do not condone the state taking calculated action in the name of justice to "right" the wrong.

Although his wasn't a capital case, Alan Crotzer was exonerated last month after DNA evidence proved his innocence. While Michael Morales admitted to his crimes, I remain resolved that executing him retains the status of murder. And murdering the murderer is neither satisfying nor just nor humane. Violence begets violence.

Maybe You Thought I'd Resist . . .

but no. My uncle sent me this cartoon, a friendly jab at my law student status, and it really made me smile. I promise I won't talk about he-who-must-not-be-named any more.

Idiot

Last week I posted about the various ways to interpret and apply The Document That Is The Constitution. Justice Antonin Scalia provided a wonderful follow-up with this story. Apparently anyone who thinks that the interpretation and application of the Constitution must adjust to social changes is an "idiot." In case you were wondering. Or worried. Or curious.

For the record, Scalia bills himself as an originalist (although he may be more accurately described as a Practice of the Time-ist). Meaning we apply the Constitution as it was originally written and intended. Fantastic. Only white, male, landowners (about 10% of the population at the time The Document was drafted) should be permitted to vote. Slavery runs throughout The Document, so maybe those sweatshops and sex slavery rings are just dandy. Women would certainly not be included in basic citizenship rights and obligations, let alone positions of power, so out goes the titillating Hillary-Condie Prez matchup.

Originalism, my ass. Talk about maintaining an outmoded status quo. Just remember - if you don't think like Scalia, you're an idiot.

Student Sex

To be honest, this link made me laugh at first. Especially the title, "Fairy Tales Don't Come True." The whole thing was so fraught with fear-based rhetoric, I just had to chuckle. But I quickly sobered up and realized there are thousands people who really do believe that shit. They really think the Nasty Queers are actively recruiting their awkward, shy teenage children. How do we address such a worldview in a way that is productive and not antagonistic? How on earth can we show that the reality of our lives - both inner and outer - do not comport with their perception of our reality? Yes, I was an awkward teenager. And I'm queer. But the fact that I got hot for girls since my early early childhood seems completely immaterial to those who so fervently believe that heteronormativity rules the day.

This one is just sickening. "Personally offensive" is so broad. I'm personally offended by uptight, puritanical prisses who insist on dumbing down education to the most whitewashed common denominator. Besides, professors don't get paid enough as it is. To insist that they create alternative class content for those who can't handle higher education is similarly offensive. Who's going to accommodate the offense that I'm taking?

On a slightly happier note, something called Sex Week at Yale is happening. Not promoting sex, just sexual awareness. My favorite part was this: "for all their good grades, ... Yale students seemed less clued in about sex than students elsewhere" and "the dating scene is notoriously complicated at Yale, where every grade matters, every extracurricular is essential and everyone is in competition." I guess that makes sense. Perhaps I'm jaded, but it seems as if those in the Ivy League are so conditioned to compete that it would naturally spill over to the animalistic mating game. And create a vacuum of experience and practice with non-Ivy Leaguers. I'm glad I don't attend Yale. And I'm sure Yale is glad I don't either.

addiction? codependence?

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” – Robert Frost

I'm not quite sure what I think about this quote.  But it doesn't sit comfortably with me.  At least not right now.
...

Kinkeeee

Some recent kink in the news:

• Attempts to start a student BDSM education and "safe bondage" group at the University of Toledo have raised concerns by the administration (i.e. "whether this [group] meets the values that are expressed in the university mission statement in terms of respecting human dignity"). This is a direct link. This link requires a free sign-in. This is a link to the club proponent's blog. Human dignity a concern, huh? I can think of a lot of general practices in higher ed that are far more degrading than kinky play. I'm only slightly kidding.
  

• Good things cannot come from a BDSM contract being made public. Especially when it results in the denial of a protective order. In my view, a protective order should never be denied on the basis of a BDSM lifestyle or contract. This looks like a clear case of domestic violence. If someone is seeking an order, there is likely a problem in the relationship. Kinky or not. To get a great Jerry Springer freak-show, read the comments posted by readers after the article. They make me feel downright normal. Amazing. I haven't felt that way for a long, long time.
  

Overdue Revolution

Be forewarned: This post isn't that meaty. It's just my sleep-deprived rantings on yet another day of introspection bordering on despair.

. . .

I loved studying Constitutional Law. (Especially the obscenity stuff, but that's mostly because I'm intrigued/obsessed with the depoliticization of sexual expression as speech ... and because I like things pornographic and obscene. Previous obscenity posts here, here, and here.)

Next to free speech and the pornography/obscenity question, my other favorite parts of Con Law included learning about the various interpretive methods for applying disparate understandings of what The Document actually meant, and what the various Founders thought about The Document. Thomas Jefferson's view most sang to my anarchist soul. He believed that every generation should throw out the Constitution lock, stock, and barrel, and start over. Talk about a living document. Nothing says you're alive like dying and being reborn. The Phoenix Constitution.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow it." -Thomas Jefferson

Aren't we rather overdue for some revolution? I am increasingly skeptical that the McDonald's-eating, Wal-Mart-shopping, FoxNews-watching masses will rise out of their apathetic stupor to question, let alone challenge, the policies which are eroding the civil rights and liberties for which our veterans, our dissidents, and our radical activists have contributed blood, sweat, tears, and lives to ensure and protect. And I am decreasingly confident that those of us who do question and challenge have the energy, will, or resources to continue fighting the good fight. Maybe I'll feel differently after attending the Rebellious Lawyering Conference in a few weeks. I need some inspiration.