The Great Blog Minimization, or My Last Alternatives Post

Hullo, friends and readers!

…I’ve had way too many blogs for a while now. The only problem with having so many is that I get confused about what to put where, get distracted trying to figure out where new posts go, and end up not publishing any posts for, er, about 2 years now.

Also, ads. I hate ads. They are the bane of my existence. I hate them with the same burning fiery passion I usually reserve for hypocrites, Nazis, and people who deny their own hypocrisy and Nazi identity while wearing swastikas and telling Jews they’re “disloyal.”

Yes, that was pointed.

But the point I’m actually making here is that I will no longer be posting on wordpress. They have ads, and if I can’t stand to read things with ads between every other paragraph, I’m certainly not going to expect that you, friend, enjoy them any more than I do. So no more!

I will be posting more regularly on my Very Own Personal Website, elyriarose.com (which comes complete with ZERO ADS, thanks to Squarespace). So hop on over to an ad-free (and perhaps even hypocrisy-free?) platform, comment on a post, make my week, and let’s be results-oriented online chatter-friends, shall we?

Thanks for sticking with me if you’ve stuck it out, welcome if you’re new, and hope to see you at the new home of the Alternatives blog — which, again, is elyriarose.com/the-blog.

Cheerio!

The Courthouse

I was nervous, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at me.

The courthouse hadn’t seemed this imposing before. But then, I hadn’t ever needed something from it before.

It was the last day in November. 2016. Less than a month earlier, Trump lost the popular vote. He was expected to win the electoral college. Trump and his VP, Mike Pence, infamous for his support of electroshock therapy for gay people and other civil rights abuses, were set to assume leadership of the US of A.

As we pulled up outside the courthouse, my love and I, the irony of it almost made me forget the hollow feeling in my gut. My love, Michelle, was assigned female at birth, and the family never came clean about any of it. At eighteen, Michelle went through a growth spurt. His voice changed. He had rage issues. There’s a word for that kind of gender-bending, these days: intersex. The word used to be hermaphrodite, but words change, and the words really aren’t the point. Michelle is someone who doesn’t fit in either the M or the F box that so many forms require you to fill out.

Neither Michelle nor I identify as gay. We love who we love. I’m agender, he’s intersex. By some definitions, we’re both transgender, but neither of us wants to transition; gender doesn’t define us. We’ve both been married before. Both married to men named David, as it turned out, and divorced rather agreeably. But our state didn’t legalize marriage for people like us, people with an F stamped on our driver’s licenses, until the Supreme Court finally, forcibly, caught the whole country up with the idea of equal rights in 2015.

We had no idea how the people in our smalltown courthouse felt about gay marriage. Legal or not, they might try to throw up roadblocks. There was no way to know what to expect. As if just getting married wasn’t enough to be nervous and excited about, we didn’t even know if we would get that far.

The paperwork was all in my backpack. An unseasonably warm breeze ruffled my scarf as I pulled the pack from the back seat. Michelle, long black leather coat swirling dramatically, draped a long arm over my shoulder.

That always makes me feel better. Always makes me smile.

Michelle’s hip had been acting up, so we took our time, trying to find the entrance to the courthouse. It was all the way around the back, of course. Construction. When is there not construction? But he kept his arm over my shoulder as we went, so I didn’t mind.

I’d never seen a security guard at a small-town courthouse. Where I grew up you just walked in, got lost, asked directions, and eventually found where you were headed. No metal detector, no guard. But this courthouse was different.

The security guard looked us over, Michelle’s long black leather coat, my short bright red hair. Told us we’d have to take the backpack back to the car, and Michelle’s wallet with the chain, too. Chains can be deadly, I suppose. I took our packet of documents out of the bag and handed it off to Michelle. He extracted the drivers license from his wallet. We didn’t say why we were there, yet, but I still didn’t want to leave Michelle alone with the fellow. Granted, he was a full eight inches taller than the guard was, and plenty good at taking care of himself… it just didn’t feel right. So as soon as I was out of sight of the door, I ran. Dashed to the car, dumped the backpack, dumped my coat. Dashed back, locked the car door with that handy little keyfob as I did.

I guess all the working out I do is good for something, because I wasn’t even winded when I got back to the entrance. And everything seemed fine. The metal detector didn’t turn me away. It wasn’t until I asked the guard where we should go to get a marriage license that he stopped meeting my eyes. That’s when that hollow feeling jumped up my throat again.

“First floor,” he said gruffly. “Across the hall.”

We wandered down the wrong hallway first, of course, and he let us wander for a minute before he finally directed us to the elevator. Polite enough, but still not meeting our eyes. We both knew he didn’t approve. It was in every line of his body.

The first floor of the building was ornate, not like the bare commercial basement we’d come in through. Carpets, high ceilings, dark wood paneling, heavy frames. We found the probate court door easily enough. We hadn’t talked about it, but both of us stood farther apart than we usually do. No more arm over my shoulder. We walked through the doorway, into the probate court office, and stood awkwardly for a long moment in front a counter that was almost chest-high.

Someone asked how they could help us. A young woman in a red sweater looked up when we said we were there for a marriage license. She hopped out of her desk chair and came over. We went through all the paperwork we had brought, made sure Michelle’s W2 would work as a stand-in for his missing social security card (which we’d lost in an epic roller coaster adventure earlier this year). Everything was fine, until we said we’d both been married before.

Neither of us had brought our divorce paperwork. It hadn’t even crossed our minds. I was reasonably certain I knew where mine was. I checked the time — 3:30 pm, and the website had said to be at the courthouse before 4 pm to apply for a marriage license. We lived maybe 10, 15 minutes away from the courthouse. It was possible. Barely.

“If we can get the paperwork, do you think we’ll still have time to get the marriage license today?” I asked. I was doing my damnedest to convey warmth, and worry, and the gut-sense that we were real people in a vulnerable moment.

She glanced up at the clock. “It really depends on how busy things get,” she hedged. “But I think you’ll have time.”

I thanked her as we gathered up the documents. Just two more things we needed to grab to get this marriage license. Just two. We had time to get it done today if everything went smoothly. I knew we did.

If we didn’t… our wedding might not quite work out the way we’d planned.

It wouldn’t be a disaster, I told myself as we rode the elevator down. Not a disaster at all, as we passed the empty security station. We’d roll with the punches and find a way to make everything work out. But I did not relish trying to drag Michelle out to the courthouse again on another day. Bad enough that we both had to be there — bad enough, with him on a tight writing deadline and a short fuse for people in general. Worse, because that deadline had technically already passed.

We held hands on the way back to the car. I could tell his hip was still hurting, so I didn’t push the pace.

“I think we have time to get this done today. I know where my divorce papers are,” I said as we plumped into our seats. “Do you have yours?”

“If I have them, they’d be in the black filing cabinet in the bedroom.” He pulled his phone out and scrolled through news without really reading. “I almost didn’t tell them I’d been married before. Not entirely sure I even have a copy.”

I winced at that, but didn’t say anything. If the papers existed, we’d find them. Maybe it wouldn’t be today. But like we’ve already established, that would not be a disaster.

Not unless we can’t get the papers in order until after Trump takes office and he or his cabinet find some way to re-illegalize gay marriage or make anybody who doesn’t want us to get married bold enough to throw up more roadblocks. But we’re not there yet so it really doesn’t need worrying about and we really have better things to focus on right now. Don’t we. Focus.

“Well.” I breathed. “Let’s see what we can find at home. Would you spin the pokestops on my phone while we zoom?” Michelle took my phone, and I eased out of the parking space and into traffic. He didn’t look entirely happy about it. He and some friends had gotten me into the game, and now, just a few months after launch, I was the only one who still played much. The game was too buggy for the rest of them, or they were too busy.

I drove around the square slowly, slow enough that he could spin all the stops and get their rewards. We were almost out of town when a rare pokemon showed up — a Lickitung, I think. (Let me just say for the record that I have no knowledge of Pokemon outside of this game. The creatures are bizarre and if it didn’t reward walking and exploring new places so effectively, I would have nothing to do with it.) Michelle turned on his version of the game to try to catch the critter, but before it finished loading, traffic sped up and we were out of range.

“None of these fucking stops are giving me anything,” he muttered. “They’re all ‘Try Again Later’.”

“Ah,” I winced. “They changed the game again. It’s been that way for a couple days. If you’re going over 20, nothing pops and you can’t get any of the stops.” I could tell he was upset, and tried to keep my tone lighthearted. “It’s almost enough to make me stop playing in the car.”

We were close to home already. Michelle went back to reading on his phone after catching one last poke-critter, while I navigated the maze of back streets. At a stop sign, I glanced over to my phone in his lap. It was stuck on one of the pokemon screens. I reached over and tapped out of it as we started up again.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that.” His mouth was tight. He looked straight ahead.

“I was just closing out of the screen. The only reason I keep it open any more when I’m driving is to see if anything rare pops up. When it’s stuck on that screen I can’t do that,” I explained.

“I just… you asked me to play for you. And now you aren’t trusting me to do it.”

That didn’t sound like him. I glanced over as we pulled up to the house. “It isn’t about trust, Beloved. You weren’t paying attention to it, so I tapped out of the screen. But we’re here – let’s get our papers and talk about it more on the way back to the courthouse.”

My divorce papers were right where I thought I’d put them, in the little black accordion file stuffed under my desk. “Any luck?” I called, heading to the bedroom.

“Got ’em! Right at the front.” He straightened and held out a fat wad of official-looking paper to me as I came in.

I took the stack and checked the time. Not quite 3:40. “I think we’ve got time to do it today,” I grinned.

As I pulled out of the driveway, I kept my phone closed.

“So… would you rather not play Pokemon on my phone when we’re driving?” I kept one eye on Michelle and one on the road. He didn’t seem quite so agitated, but he still wasn’t calm.

“No. I’d rather you didn’t play while you’re driving. And I feel like an ass for saying it.”

“Beloved,” I began.

“Apparently it takes a whole lot of frustration to actually get me to come out and say it,” he fumed.

“Beloved, that’s exactly what I need to hear. I’m not good at subtle.” I studied his profile, the straight nose, the proud chin. “But our relationship — you know you can tell me what to do. There doesn’t even have to be a reason as good as this one.”

“It would just suck if you were driving and playing Pokemon and hit a kid or something,” he said.

“Yeah, it would. I’ve been careful, but if you want me to stop playing while I’m driving entirely, I will do it. I promise. That’s… that’s what it means to me to be your submissive.”

He looked up at that. “I know,” he sighed as he glanced out the window. “And I’m trying not to abuse that power.”

I put a hand on his leg. “Or abuse me. I know. But this – I can’t tell you how much this helps me.”

“This – Beloved, I don’t know how you do it.” We turned back onto the main road into town. “My whole life, if anybody told me what to do, I’d want to do the opposite. I told you about the shower revolt with my mom, right?” He nodded. Suddenly, my eyes started to tear up. I hadn’t been expecting a minor squabble to run this deep, but here it was. “Somehow, you get right past that contrarian streak. I love knowing the things you want me to do, because once I know them… there’s nothing I want to do more. I love being able to make you happy.”

There was nothing I loved more.

“Can I still play while I’m driving around the graveyard, though?” I asked, hoping. The graveyard was the best place to restock in town. It had become the second home for pretty much everyone who was still playing.

“Playing in the graveyard’s fine,” he said gently. “It just makes me nervous when you have it open all the time.”

For once, I didn’t argue, even in my head. He was right. And it actually felt nice not to split-screen my attention while driving like I’d been doing. It felt even better to know I was doing what he wanted.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still nervous about the marriage license. But I felt more settled, not quite as hollow as I had before. The courthouse still loomed, but now we knew where to go, and we had all of our paperwork. There wasn’t much that could go wrong, at this point.

**

“This just doesn’t look right.” The woman in the white sweater shook her head as she pored carefully over my divorce paperwork. “See, the judge didn’t even sign this last page.”

She called another courthouse employee over, and the two put their heads together. The official seal on the back page of the document was clear. The stamped date and certification was clear. The second woman looked up. “Where did you get your divorce?”

“Cook County, Illinois,” I replied. Nodding towards the document, I said, “I do wonder if that’s just how they do the signature there. I think this was a certified copy, not the original.”

The other woman nodded. “You know, that’s a good point.”

“Is there any chance you could call them and check?” I asked. “I know it’s a little late in the day, but it is an hour earlier there.”

“Yeah, I think we could do that.” She glanced back to the first woman. “Would you take care of it?”

“What, call Illinois? Now?”

Michelle and I exchanged glances.

“I mean, if Kim were here, she’d be able to tell and we wouldn’t have to go through all that. I just don’t know if they’ll be able to get it done today.” She talked to the other employee, as if we weren’t standing right there.

“It’s going to be really hard for us to both come back on a different day,” I admitted. “We’re writing under a deadline. If there’s any way it can happen today that would be really great.”

The younger woman in the red sweater, the one who had helped us before, piped up from her desk. “Isn’t Kim in a meeting? She’s still here, right?”

In the flurry, as someone went off to see where Kim was, we were left face to face with the older woman. The one who was so terribly concerned that we might both be forging divorce papers. The one who still wasn’t making eye contact with either of us.

“Well, while they’re figuring that out, are these papers ok?” I asked. Michelle hadn’t had a lawyer on his divorce — dissolution, technically — but as far as we knew, everything was official. Just like it had been for the past 10-plus years.

The woman flipped through the stack of papers. “I don’t see a judge’s order here either. You say this was in our courthouse?” She met Michelle’s eyes for the first time. “You’ll have to check across the hallway, make sure they have all the papers there. You can both take a seat out in the hallway while we take care of the other one.” She gestured to the open hall behind us.

Reluctantly, we stepped out into the hallway. It was almost 4:10 already. At this point, they could decide to close the office on a whim, and we’d be sunk. Michelle poked his head in the door across the hall where the records were and struck up a conversation with someone.

I checked my phone. No signal meant no pokemon, and no escape from the fact that there was nothing I could do right now to help our chances of getting a marriage license today.

I knew how much Michelle hated this kind of bureaucracy. I did too; I just tried to focus on the point and not get sucked into the hating. Once all this bureaucracy was finally done, we’d be able to get married. And that would be worth a lot more hassle than this.

I just hoped Kim would get out of her meeting in time, and be able to help us.

Michelle ambled back out into the hall, brandishing a tiny slip of paper clipped to top of the divorce paperwork.

“No surprise, but they had no idea why the office needed this,” he said under his breath. “There was a lot of eye-rolling, but we’re all set.”

Right then, they called us back into the probate court office. We were whisked off to the back, where Kim was just sitting down. Standing off to one side while she finished a conversation over some case files, we had a chance to look around at her desk.

“Are those your kids?” I asked when she finally looked up.

“Almost. They’re my grandkids,” she said as she leafed through my divorce papers.

“You don’t look old enough to have grandkids!” I was surprised – until she said that, I would have put her in her 30s, 40s at the latest. She was slender and moved quickly, but with a deliberate economy that made her come across as incredibly efficient.

“Well, bless you,” she said, finally cracking a smile. “My son will be turning 32 soon enough. Still not used to it myself.”

Without even bringing up the divorce paperwork, she picked up the phone and dialed. “I’m just going to check the records with the Cook County court,” she said around the mouthpiece.

“Thank you,” I mouthed, and we leaned against the wall to wait. While she was on hold or navigating automated phone menus, a couple other people stopped by to talk with her. One chatty, long-haired woman sat in a chair next to where we were standing and started talking offhand about how complicated the phone systems were. She had a pile of paperwork on her lap.

Another couple, a man and a woman, came in through the door asking about a marriage license. The older woman who had raised all the concerns about our divorce paperwork went to help them. I couldn’t hear everything they said, but they walked out with their marriage license in hand before the phone call ended. I really hoped we could get ours settled today, too.

Right then, Kim got through to a real person. A moment more, and she was reading off the record number. Time flickered. The next few seconds felt like forever. She thanked the person on the other end and hung up.

“Everything’s fine. You’re all set,” she affirmed crisply. It was 4:25 pm.

The other woman sitting by us leaned forward. “I bet I know exactly how that confusion happened,” she started to confide. “It’s a little complicated. They have this thing where…” she paused, shook her head.

I don’t know if my face conveyed the urgency I was feeling, or whether she realized that her explanation might take too long. She cut herself off before I could. “But you don’t need to hear this right now. Go on, get your license, and congratulations.” She smiled and waved as she turned to Kim.

We hurried back to the main desk, armed not only with our small mountain of paperwork, but with official approval, too. The older woman in the white sweater who had helped the other couple started to stand up and head over to us, but the younger one who had explained things on our first visit beat her to it.

“I can take care of them,” she said to the older woman with a faint smile.

The next few minutes were a whirlwind. Our full names, places of birth, parent’s names, everything was cross-checked and printed on a form with ornate curlicues on the edges. One typo meant a swift reprint. We handed over the cash fee. She handed our driver’s licenses back.

And held out our marriage license with a lopsided smile.

I think we thanked her several times. I remember wishing I had a business card to give her, though I suppose I know where she works and I could go thank her again any time. One thing I know for certain is that when we got our marriage license, it was 4:32 pm.

We walked out of the courthouse arm in arm. I made a conscious effort not to beam at everyone we passed, but I probably failed. I might not have been trying very hard.

We settled into the car. I leaned my head back against the seat in utter relief. “I am so, so glad we got that done today.”

Michelle didn’t respond right away. I looked over at him. “I… Beloved, aren’t you glad about this? I mean, I know you love me, but you don’t, I don’t know. You don’t really seem happy about this part of it.”

“No,” he said softly. “No, I’m not happy about this part of it. As far as I’m concerned, we’re already married.” He took my hand, held it to his chest. “We already have that bond in our hearts, ever since the public proposal. That kind of recognition is more than many cultures need to recognize a marriage as valid. So this piece of it, the bureaucracy, the license, isn’t the important thing. Not to me.” He kissed my knuckles. He seemed about to say something more, but he stopped himself.

“What is it?” One of his eyebrows had a quirk that usually means something’s going on. It was quirking hard.

“You saw that other couple that came in while we were at Kim’s desk? The man and the woman?”

I nodded that I had. “I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying, though. What about them?”

“I thought you might have missed that. Maybe… well. I don’t really like telling you things that make your view of the world more pessimistic,” he hedged.

“I like my view of the world to be realistic. You know I can’t do that if I’m missing facts. Besides, I’d rather have an accurate opinion than a comfortable one,” I reminded him.

He sighed. “I thought you’d say that. Well. I heard the man say he had been married and divorced before.” He shot me a look. “But the woman in the white sweater, who helped them?”

“She didn’t even ask to see his divorce papers.”

The Meaning of Life

The meaning of life always feels like a secretly taboo question to me. Like if you ask what the meaning of life is, or even think about it too much, you’ve given away this crucial piece of information: You’ve just told everyone that you don’t know what the answer is. Or if there even is an answer. 

I edited a book recently that delved into this question. There isn’t much I can say about it that’s kind or helpful. Mostly, the answers the author presented were simplistic, materialistic, and soul-numbing. But at least he was willing to consider the question. And that was enough to get me thinking.

Maybe asking about the meaning of life is asking the wrong question.

If we ask it that way — what is the meaning of life? — there’s a hidden assumption to the question that, when I actually think about it, I realize I need to unpack. That assumption is that our lives have external, objective meaning. We could paraphrase the question as, “What is the point of my life?” or “How will my life affect people other than me?” These questions are also worth asking. But they lead to very different answers than the question, the real question, that I hear when people talk about the meaning of life.

The question I hear is more like “What gives my life meaning?” or “What really matters to me?” That’s a question that can lead to life-changing answers. When you really strip down your life and your priorities, how would you answer? Would your answer be friendship, or family, or love? Would it be taking a career path that feeds your soul and enriches your community? Would it be making as much money as you possibly can, regardless of ethics? Would it be just getting by and having time to relax once in a while?

Your answer to that question — what really matters to you? — is one of the hardest and also most important answers to arrive at in your life. It means committing yourself to your answer, committing to think about what you’re doing in the world. Or what you’re not doing. It means taking responsibility for your choice. And once you’ve done that, once you’ve managed to articulate the things that matter most to you… it means being okay with those answers.

That part might be easy for some people. It isn’t for me. I never feel like I’m doing enough. Never have. I volunteer at a local food bank, and I’m training to volunteer at nearby Cuyahoga National Park. I work with clients who have hoarding issues at whatever rate they can afford. I edit books and write poems and blog carry my fair share of emotional labor and support my family and friends… and none of this feels like enough, because there’s always more I know I could be working on. I could go to law school or med school or get a PhD, and earn more intellectual legitimacy. I could have a full-time job instead of working for myself and my partner.

There will always, ALWAYS, be things in the world that I’m not doing. One of the curses of being reasonably good at a reasonable number of things is that there’s no clear life path to follow. It’s not like I have a SINGLE BURNING PASSION to follow — rather, I have many passions, from art to community building to sustainable living to… you get the idea. And that’s the key thing I’m pointing at here.

The world is full of fascinating, worthwhile things to do. Each of them could comprise the meaning of someone’s life. So I propose we use this tired, sneaky old question about the meaning of life to help us sift through all that fascination and discover an answer. I suggest we think not about the things that are the most fun while they’re happening, but the things that leave us feeling fulfilled, energized, satisfied; the things that give meaning to our lives.

And did I mention that my Beloved & I got engaged?

I used to say that my life goal was to help create a more sustainable society. I love sustainability; I love the insight it offers into the deep entanglement between people, places, and the economy. And my life goal is still true. But the people side of that tripartite equation is closest to my heart right now. The people I care about give meaning to my life. 

Maybe this isn’t quite the kind of answer you thought you’d find here. I won’t claim it’s my final answer. I intend to use this question about the meaning of life to keep on sifting through the ideas I come in contact with, and make the question into a tool to help me focus not only on the things that matter to the rest of the world, but the things that matter to me.

I don’t think there is a right answer or a wrong answer to this question about the meaning of life. There are plenty of other questions buried in the substrata. Implicit: what do you believe about the nature of life? of God? Do you rely on external perception or your own internal feeling-states or some other measure to identify meaning? Do you believe in reincarnation — and does considering the meaning of many lives yield a different answer than the meaning of just one? (and if so, why?) What even constitutes ‘meaning’? What do you care about? What needs to change in the world? What’s the best use of your time?

So I’ll turn this around on you, reader. Which of these many questions about life and meaning and everything would you prefer to answer? And — what would your answer be?

Let’s Talk Public Bathrooms.

A few points to start from.

1. Public bathrooms are not the same as locker rooms. People don’t (usually) strip naked in public bathrooms. Ideally, they go in, relieve themselves in the relative privacy of a stall, and leave.
2. Too many people (trans people, women, children, men, all kinds of people!) are the victims of attacks in public bathrooms.

There are plenty of public bathrooms that are single-user and still gender-segregated. It’s quiet silly. I – an agender person who usually passes as female – prefer using single-user men’s rooms because IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT THE SIGN SAYS. I will be the only person in that bathroom until I am done. While I’m there, the bathroom is for whatever gender person I happen to be.

(Ok, the only way in which is matters is that now I know they really don’t clean men’s bathrooms as often as they clean women’s bathrooms. Ugh.)

If only one person is in a bathroom at a time, the bathroom itself does not have a gender identity that needs protecting. Women can use the men’s single-user bathroom. Men can use the women’s. And people who are neither women nor men can use whichever the hell they want.

…but in that case, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop differentiating between genders for single-user bathrooms? Come on, save on signage AND get that stupid dress figurine and that ridiculous square dude off of every single wall ever. NOBODY ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE THAT ANYWAY. Besides, I hate dresses. I’m going in the bathroom for the people who wear pants. Those signs really drive me up the wall, because they’re so completely arbitrary, unnecessary, AND hurtful to people who don’t fit in simple gender boxes. So why enforce the unnecessary that is also discriminatory?

Single-user bathrooms, though, don’t seem to be the problem. Or they’re a pretty easily fixable problem: just change the signs. (Although I *would* be interested to learn if attacks happen in single-user bathrooms as much as they do in the bigger stall line-ups. My hunch is they don’t, but I could be wrong.)

The main problem seems to be multi-user bathrooms. So let’s talk about those.

I’ve been misgendered before in public bathrooms. Maybe you have too. Older women (usually) see my short hair (and miss my figure? I’ll take it!) and tell me I’m in the wrong place. I say I’m not and they realize what they’ve done and apologize profusely for their mistake. (Meanwhile, I’m just happy that for once, I came off as masculine enough to trip their boy-sensors.) That’s the extent of my unusual bathroom experiences. And even that is too much.

 

Isn’t the purpose of a bathroom… using the bathroom? What do we actually gain by separating everybody out by their biological sex, other than excessive lines for some women’s rooms, and a weird sense of who’s allowed somewhere and who isn’t?

I’ve thought about this a lot. It seems to me that we gain exactly nothing.

Think about it. What if families could go to the bathroom all together (instead of bringing their opposite-gender kids into the bathroom the adult with them uses, which happens all the time)? Seems pretty reasonable. What if groups of people out on the town could go to the bathroom in packs, and watch out for each other? Cool!

If we take away those weird gender divides that bathrooms have, it seems to me that we suddenly have safer bathrooms, because more people are in them. More people of all genders = less secluded = not a good environment for attacks – on anyone.

Now, I travel alone a good deal, and have for a while. So I know that going to the bathroom in a group doesn’t always work. (And my guess is that people who are alone in bathrooms are the most common victims of attacks, unless there’s a group of attackers involved.) There will probably always be times that people are alone and vulnerable in those bathrooms… unless…

This might be a little farfetched, but it might not: what if places that offer public restrooms also offer a security person (or two) to keep the people using those bathrooms safe?

I mean, I’d rather have some privacy in the bathroom, but I don’t think my privacy is more important than other people’s physical safety. And I’ve already given up a degree of privacy when I use public bathrooms.

So here’s my proposal: bathroom desegregation. Put stalls up around the urinals too, while we’re at it. Let go of the habit of splitting groups up by gender when they’re peeing behind closed doors. Create a shit-ton (ha, ha) of security jobs while we’re at it. Make sure that NOBODY in any bathroom is an appealing target for the sick, awful people who want to beat us up or rape us. And take away the target those stupid gender signs brand on trans people’s foreheads. Take away the social awkwardness that gender policing in bathrooms has given us. Everyone belongs in public bathrooms, because – as that lovely kids’ books says – everybody poops.

Public bathrooms are for everyone.

It would be great if they were safe for everyone, too.

Thoughts?

 

PS – And we can totally come up with cooler signs for public bathrooms. I challenge you…

a perspective on Israel & Palestine

I worry about what’s going on between Israel and Palestine.

About me: I’m Jewish. Like the rest of my mom’s family, I’m proud of my heritage and the values that are central to being Jewish; the value of education and doing good deeds (mitzvot) were the core concepts of Judaism that resonated for me, growing up. I had a Bat Mitzvah when I was 13, and led services at my synagogue many times while I was in middle school and high school. I’ve never been to Israel or Palestine.

Disclaimer: I’m no expert in who’s done what to whom. I know the basic outline; Israel was founded in 1948 as a Jewish state, and the local Palestinian population was driven into more restricted areas. Both sides have attacked and fought off attacks countless times. I know the United Nations sees Israel as an occupying nation, and has condemned those of their actions that violate the Geneva Convention. I know Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens. Some of them are under Israel’s control, with no ability to vote. The UN has also – sort of – recognized Palestine as a country.

When I was in college, I took classes on the Israel – Palestine conflict. We looked at issues of resources, especially water rights. We looked at terrorism and imperialism. I had taken classes on the Holocaust in high school that moved me deeply. I read Leon Uris’ Exodus, Michener’s The Source. And through all the classes, and all the history, one thing kept bothering me more and more.

Partly, it bothered me because I couldn’t see a way out of the conflict. Nor could anyone I knew. Not the other students, not our professors, not the leaders on any side of the conflict. It seemed like a completely intractable problem. In a way, it still does. Why else do we keep seeing war after bombing after suicide bombing after war after… was there even a place where any of us could imagine peace in the Middle East?

And it bothered me because of how strongly the situation in Israel and Palestine reminded me of how early Americans had treated the people who were native to this continent, who were here before us. Growing up, I had a decent education in some aspects of Native American culture. I learned from Native teachers, volunteered for a month when I was 16 on a reservation in Wyoming, home to members of both the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes. (They used to be enemies, and they still wound up on the same reservation.)

Every person I know and respect abhors what our forebears did to the native people in this country. We all know the stories – we drove native people from their lands, pushed them onto smaller and smaller reservations, took away their ability to live as they had for centuries by claiming more and more of their land as our own, gave them smallpox blankets. And the native people fought back — some of them, for a while. They used the tactics they were able to use; guerilla warfare, night attacks, any tactic that would work. (Many were the same tactics we Americans did when we fought for our independence. They are the tactics any small group willing to use violence will turn to, especially when they’re outgunned and want to keep fighting for their cause. This is true regardless of how just or unjust that cause is. But that isn’t the point.) Even though Native people fought back for many years, they aren’t fighting now. Reservations are disproportionately poor places. The Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is the poorest area in the entire United States. Many Native cultures, languages, and ways of being are in danger of disappearing entirely. That kind of loss impoverishes everyone, not just the young Native people who no longer see the value in their heritage, or their own perspectives.

Everyone I know and respect expresses — at the very least — sorrow about how things turned out in this country. Many express shame and regret the aggressive tactics our forebears used to take over a country that didn’t belong to them.

But few of those very people recognize the parallels between the way American was established and the way Israel is establishing itself now.

It’s not a perfect mapping. The Middle East is far more densely settled than North America was, for one thing. The technology gap isn’t quite so dramatic. But the Israeli government claims that Palestine is not a legitimate country, just like we did to Native people. (A country does not have to be organized like ours to exist or serve people.) The Israeli government applies different laws and standards to Israeli citizens than it does to Palestinians. Israel is taking over more and more territory that once belonged to Palestinians, just as the reservations we set aside for Native people have shrunk dramatically over the years. The tactics Israel uses to govern will never lead to peace. The tactics Palestinians use to resist will never lead to peace, either. But at the end of the day, Israel is doing to the Palestinian people what America did to the Native people.

And we’re helping them do it.

There are a lot of points that could be made here. I only want to make one.

I want to live to see peace in the Middle East. 

I don’t know how to get to that point, but I know we’re not on a path to peace now. I hate seeing my people, the Jewish people, harm others, and I hate seeing people harm my fellow Jews. I refuse to believe that there is no way to bring peace to the Middle East.

Like most reasonable people, I see violence as the failure of diplomacy. If the state of Israel can only exist in a perpetual state of violence, then the state of Israel has failed. And if that’s true, then Zionism – in this case, at least – is a trap. I don’t particularly like the Zionist idea; I prefer a clear separation between church (or synagogue) and state.

None of us know what to do when our dreams and ideals – like Zionism, or manifest destiny – lead to so much death and suffering. We become complicit. We cause suffering in pursuit of those ideals, and when dreams go south, they take a toll on us as well.

I’m no different. I have no idea what I or anyone could do to forge a livable peace in the Middle East. Maybe a joint, multi-cultural state that incorporate Israelis and Palestinians is possible. Maybe separate-but-sort-of-equal states would be more palatable to those who live there. Or maybe Israel is not a state that can exist in the Middle East without constant violence. Early Zionists suggested that the state of Israel could be established anywhere; it wasn’t a dream that was always tied to the Holy Land. Nearly 60 years after it was created, Israel is still fighting. Israel gets military support from the US to the tune of $3+ billion per year. Why are we supporting a conflict that has no end in sight? How can we call it support, when our aid only serves to draw out the struggle?

I’m worried about what’s going on between Israel and Palestine. I don’t have a solution for it. But I’m willing to consider any options, at this point. I believe in the resilience of my people far more strongly than I believe we need to control any particular piece of territory. This dissent is certainly anti-Zionist. But it is not anti-Semitic. I hold these beliefs because I want to see my people live, and live wisely, without the stains on our conscience that we are earning from our callous, unethical treatment of another people. This dissent shows far more loyalty to my people than blind support does, especially when the Israeli leadership is in clear violation of international treaties.

The Jewish people and the Jewish culture existed without a homeland for thousands of years. It would be supremely ironic if claiming a homeland led to our downfall.

However it happens, I hope we can find a way to end this endless war soon. I’d like to visit the Holy Land before I die, but I will only go there when a government controls the area that does not commit war crimes. I will only go to the Holy Land when the people who control it have learned to treat all the people they govern with respect. I will only go there when going there would not make me complicit in war crimes.

I hope that day comes.

 

What Really Matters.

6 weeks ago, I stopped buying any physical stuff other than food.

There’s a good long tradition of people giving up what seem like necessities, and accomplishing great things. People take vows of silence, or decide they’ll only walk so they don’t have to use oil. John Francis gave a TED talk about his experiences doing exactly that. 17 years of silence, 17 years of only walking. His TED talk is about listening, and how hard it was for him to really listen when he was just waiting for someone else to stop talking, so he could get his turn.

6 weeks isn’t much, compared to 17 years of that. Even 6 weeks has made a difference, though. I’m looking forward to seeing how the world looks after a year of only buying food.

So far, one of the most interesting pieces has been seeing what exceptions to my self-imposed rule I’m willing to sit back and consider.

There are a couple of things that I have no problem listing as exceptions. They’re on that original sheet of paper I wrote up – toilet paper, gas, anything my car or my bicycle need to run well. They’re not quite necessities. I could walk to the grocery store 3 miles away, I could walk or bike everywhere instead of using my car. But these exceptions I’m willing to make are ones that give me many more possibilities than I would have without them. Or, in the case of toilet paper, make me a lot more comfortable about personal hygiene.

They also don’t take up much time. It’s not like getting an oil change sinks me deep into a brainspace where I can’t stop thinking about buying more bright socks. I mean, socks are awesome. Mine just won’t have any new friends join them for the rest of this year.

But there another class of exceptions that I wasn’t expecting. It has to do with my partner. First, I should say that my partner has been incredibly supportive of this whole goal-complex. We’ve talked about how to avoid getting me gifts that are physical stuff, and how much I usually prefer gifts that are shared experiences anyway. And I’ve made it clear that getting a physical thing as a gift once in a while wouldn’t upset me. My outlaws got me a really wonderful little dragon on a chain when I visited – it’s perfect, I really like it, and since I didn’t ask for it in any way, it doesn’t feel like it breaks my goal. Point being, my fears have been allayed. This is a good experiment, and it’s not causing stress on the relationship-front. But something is happening.

My partner writes. A lot. And is a giant introvert. This pattern helps writing be a thing, and I support it. I’m often the same way. But I like getting out a little more often than they do – say, 2 or 3 times a week instead of once a week. And when I’m out, if my partner needs or wants something, I have no problem picking it up for them. That has already included a few seasons of CSI, the occasional grocery store run that involved paper towels, and… I end up wondering what happened to my ICK MATERIAL GOODS PUT IT DOWN AND RUN reflex. (It’s a pretty awesome reflex to have developed. I hear it’s pretty funny to see in person, too.)

Turns out it’s pretty simple. I am deeply committed to my goal of buying nothing – for myself. But I’m also deeply committed to this partnership. My anti-materialist goal is mine. It’s not my partner’s goal. Ultimately, it comes down to this: I don’t want to make them go out to the same store I’ve just been in to get paper towels to clean up the cats’ occasional hairballs. It would be a perverse way to apply what was meant to be an empowering goal for me. To do it and stand by that choice, I would have to prioritize my goal over my partner’s peace of mind, and – here’s the thing that has me really happy today – I’m not willing to do that.

And we’ve finally arrived. This is exactly why I chose the goal I did. I knew it would be hard. I knew it would be rewarding. And I suspected it would show me what – if anything – I cared about as deeply as I care about living gently on this dear little planet.

So here I am, delighted. Choosing to buy no physical things this year has already shown me how deeply I care about my partner. And it’s shown me in no uncertain terms that they respect my choices. They don’t share my personal commitment to not buying stuff this year, but they support me to do it anyway.

It’s an odd direction to approach Valentine’s Day from. But this year, on this famously corporate holiday, I won’t be buying flowers that are slowly dying. I’ll be celebrating the things that really matter – the things I can see so much more clearly when they’re not buried under a pile of symbolic gifts, hidden intentions, and feelings that haven’t found words.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. I hope you can use the day to celebrate the things that matter most to you. ❤

leaving the billboards behind

The thing about alternatives. The best and worst thing. Really good alternatives are hard to see from the highway.

Now, this can be awesome. If you love venturing off the beaten path, challenging yourself, being a maverick, wandering the wild looking for answers or other paths or even the right questions to ask, you’ve probably found some really neat ideas out there. Alternatives to pretty much everything — capitalism, religion, community, work, leisure time — exist somewhere in the world.

But it can also make finding worthwhile alternatives too challenging. We don’t all have the time to go tramping around through vast uncharted swathes of mental terrain until we find the perfect idea. Sometimes it’s easier just to stop at Target on the way home, and pass the hours we would have spent on research with our families.

I’ve been thinking about what kinds of pieces I want to put up here on the alternatives blog. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want this to become an advertisement for the least worst of mainstream options. That Goodwill / Salvation Army post was relevant to many of you, but we came away from it realizing that Goodwill is nowhere near as good as it could be (even if it is better than Salvation Army, for those who care about LGBT civil rights). I’m sure there’s a value in comparing big box stores, or comparing similar products many of us use, and sometimes that’s what I’ll do.

What I really want is to use this blog to focus on the ideas people have dreamed up that actually make the world we all live in better. Define better however you want — more sustainable, more supportive, more fair, more engaging, more just, more equitable. All of those, and more.

Too often, we don’t get to see the really amazing things that are happening around the world. They’re too far off the highway, and we don’t have the time to explore what’s beyond the end of every back road and still get home by the end of the day.

So I’m going to take a little while longer between blog entries here. I’m going to dig deeper, find alternatives that aren’t just the least worst, but alternatives that are actually good. And I’ll share what I find here, along with how you can get involved with them if they call to you.

Meanwhile, let’s come at it from another perspective. What have you come across in our world that struck you as poorly designed? What seems irreparably broken? Just asking these questions, I’m thinking about politics, healthcare, homelessness, sexual assault, pharmaceutical maneuvering, student debt, that undercurrent of ownership in relationships… and I don’t know nearly as much about alternatives to those things as I want to. Maybe you have more to add — maybe you see systems that don’t work every day at your job. Here’s your invite: chime in any time.

I’ll be somewhere off the beaten path, far from the billboards, finding whatever I find.

Storage: The Home Organizing Con(tainer)

If you’re like most people, when you think about organizing your home, you think about getting more storage containers.

In the timeless words of Admiral Ackbar, IT’S A TRAP.

Of the dozens of people I’ve worked with, not a SINGLE ONE has needed to buy more storage containers. Not one. Why is that?

There are a couple of reasons. One, if you’ve been thinking about getting your house in order for a while, you’ve probably already made some trips to the Con(tainer) Store. You’ve probably got extra hanging files and extra bins tucked away… somewhere out of sight… Or you have containers full of tax documents from 15 years ago that you could empty out without even reading any of them. You just haven’t gotten around to that part yet.

Second, you may not have heard about some of the great organizing tricks that make many containers obsolete. For example, when you position bookcases about 4 inches away from a wall, there’s great storage behind them for broken-down moving boxes. They’re out of sight until you start packing for your next move. Furniture about 10-12 inches from a side wall make a great mini storage space for things like brooms, vacuum cleaners, umbrellas, and walking sticks — no container needed. There are tricks for desks, traveling, bathrooms, you name it.

But the bottom line is that the problem I encounter in most homes isn’t about finding containers for the stuff you use. The problem is that you have a bunch of stuff in your home that you don’t use.

Storage containers provide a handy way to keep stuff out of sight, but they don’t address the real problem. The problem is that there is stuff in your home that isn’t helping your home work for you. That stuff is making you work for your home — taking your mental energy to ignore, taking your money to buy containers and keep it out of sight, taking your time to sift through it and get rid of it. Storage containers may be a band-aid, but they’re like a band-aid on an infection: they  cover it up, but they don’t help it heal.

Next time you’re thinking about organizing your stuff, don’t fall for the great container con. Strike the heart of the problem. Empty out one of those boxes of old papers you haven’t looked at in years, or call me in to empty a bunch of them. Now you have an empty container (or 15) to use, and less stuff to worry about overall. I call that a win.

***

Have other container-free storage solutions? Want to share your favorite organizing tips? Let us know what they are in the comments!

The Commute: Housing, Part II

When I was growing up, my mom always walked to work. Starting in about 4th grade, I walked to school. When I graduated college and moved to Chicago to live with my then-fiancé, I made a point of only looking for apartments that were close enough for one or both of us to walk to work.

The longest commutes I’ve had were about 10 miles one-way. In the city of Chicago, ten miles can easily translate to an hour-long car commute, in traffic. While I did occasionally walk those 10 miles — hey, it only takes about two and a half hours — more often I took the train, or bicycled.

I never realized how important those choices were to my happiness until I had a partner who made different ones. My impression of the horror, the cost, and the endless time suck that was commuting lasted. The relationship didn’t.

The choice to live close to your workplace isn’t always easy. If you’ve bought a house and your job moves, or you lose one job and get a new one, or if a partner takes a new job across town, it can take a good long time to find a new place to live. There may not be an ideal compromise, if you’re in a household with more than one job. 

But shortening your commute is one alternative that it’s worth your time to look into.

Dozens of studies over the years have found that shortening your commute may be the easiest way to make yourself happier, and that the people with the longest commutes have the lowest overall satisfaction with their lives. Long commutes by public transit or by car, especially those involving heavy traffic like Chicago, correlate with higher stress and more illness-related absences from work.

I decided last month not even to apply for a job that would have had me commuting an hour one way. As ideal a match as my skill set was, the length of the commute and the fact that they would have needed me on site every day had me dreading the drive while I was still reading the job description. With the small business I run right now, I work from home or from my clients’ homes, and whether I have zero commute or an hour commute, I’m doing what I love to do.

How long is your commute? Do you have the opportunity to use your commute as leisure time — to listen to audiobooks, read, listen to music? What keeps you from living closer to where you work? Would your employer be open to letting you work from home one or two days a week? How much time would you save if you lived within walking distance of work, and what would you be giving up? Could moving closer to one person’s work allow you to have fewer cars than adults in your household? What benefits would come along with having a shorter commute, or none at all?

Buying Nothing But Food: Week 1 (checking in)

IT’S WORKING!

I have bought no stuff except food this week, and it is awesome.

Somehow, in ways I don’t understand, my capacity for buying stuff appears to be tied to my capacity for creating stuff. The same week I cut myself off from buying things other than food, I finally started writing stories again. For the first time since… high school? Yep. High school.

That’s one side benefit I was definitely not expecting.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and daisies. I realized less than a day into my year-long resolution to Buy No Stuff that I had at least one project I would have to nix; I had been planning to get a smart TV, and get rid of the rickety tower of milk crates I currently use to prop up the Netflix computer while I exercise. On the other hand… I was also going to sell the computer that has been my Netflix-portal. And I really don’t need to do either of those things. The milk-crate-Netflix tower works fine for now, and I can wait until it stops working to fix it. (Besides, although it’s been a good 6 months, there’s no guarantee I’ll still be exercising as much in another 6.)

That said, this first week of buying nothing has helped me really see how much I already have. I’m pretty sure I have enough shampoo for the next year. I have enough bars of hotel soap for the next ten years, so I’ll probably end up giving most of them to a local shelter. I have more clothes than I need, though by the end of this year I may only have one or two pairs of pants left in wearable shape. I don’t have (or want) a printer, or a CD player, and that’s how I like it. I have so many art supplies that I’ve been giving them away so I have space to work with the ones I actually like. I even have enough board games to keep me busy all year (though at some point next year I’ll probably acquire a copy of Ricochet Robots).

More than those individual categories of stuff, though, this week I’ve been noticing the way privilege makes this goal possible — even reasonable. I live in a house where we don’t lock our doors. In the eleven years friends have been living here, there’s never once been a robbery. I didn’t need to go out and buy a bunch of supplies before starting this project, because I inherited a house-full of stuff when my mom passed away. I’ve been sifting through it and giving it away as quickly as I can, and luckily there’s space in our garage for all the things I still don’t know what to do with.

This year-long goal probably isn’t one that would work for everyone. I hear kids grow pretty fast; they’d need clothes sometime during a year. Babies need diapers, people with retail businesses need stock, and sometimes things we need day-to-day up and quit. A friend suggested a modification of the rules that allows replacing things if they break, or get used up, and I think that version would work for many more people.

Even if you have to modify the goal, I’d encourage you to try out a ban on
shopping for a while. Try a week, or a month. Let yourself relax into a way of being that doesn’t involve buying stuff for a while, and see what that freedom lets you discover about yourself, your priorities, and your life.

What’s so important that you have to buy it right now, anyway? Could you wait a few weeks or a month before shopping again? Do you buy enough stuff to run up credit card debt? What do you expect would change about your life if you didn’t buy things you didn’t need?