My New Substack: Tales on the Gender Trail

With the publication of my book The Unexpected Penis: Conversations on the Gender Trail, I have taken the opportunity to start a substack specifically for articles about gender. This will allow me to more easily network with other writers focusing on gender. Visit it here. https://amandakovattana.substack.com

I will maintain this blog for articles on topics other than gender. My articles on tiny house living are continued at http://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com.

Thank you for looking in on my work.

Amanda

Normally I Woudn't Be Here

In which I question call out culture, extremist activism, LGBTQ splintering and perspectives in an opinion centered culture vs a non-confrontational collectivist one.

I would normally right now be overseas in Thailand enjoying being pampered by my cook and traveling to my farm with Clasina. Or alternately traveling to my other home of origin the UK. My devising to be overseas every six months began in earnest during the Trump era. This has proven to be an excellent strategy for saving my mental health. 

Thai culture being a collectivist culture doesn't burden the individual with the need to move daily through a barrage of opinions. I once joked to a Thai friend that for every American who believes they can change the world this instant by delivering an opinion there needs to be at least a hundred Thais in agreement just to begin a discussion on a topic. This expressed equally our frustration with both Thai and American culture.

While in Thailand any actual requirement of me to express myself is so reduced that my stress level comes down to a soothing slowness that gives me a sense of timelessness and spaciousness. It also gave me the clarity of mind to look back at American culture through Facebook and sharply see the biases at play there. 

When people ask me how I stay so thin I tell them it is because my brain uses up so much fuel just trying to deconstruct my life given all I have to process making sense of it as an American of multiple perspectives.

Lockdown Retreat

Luckily I had the best of all possible lockdowns mostly alone which gave me a lot of space in isolation in my tiny house with lots to do putting in a garden and adding new dimensions to my off grid life. I kept expecting long tracts of boredom which never appeared. I was kept so busy reading the news. And I had two classes to attend on Zoom for which I installed a hanging chair. One class is called The Fool’s Journey, a year long exploration into the Western mystery school tradition using the Tarot deck designed by my teacher Pamela Eakins. I spent a lot of my shamanic journeys for the class hugging my two spirit guides and holding hands with them to fill the void left by all the social distancing. This  felt so real to me I could feel my heart opening to receive their love.

The second class was also taught by Pamela and that was a women’s writing class. We had been meeting for several years at her comfortable home on the coast and now on Zoom in the strange prison of our individual cells we spent that first meeting voicing our fears and wondering if anything we had been writing had any relevancy at all. Pamela with her usual stroke of inspiration had us sit down and write whatever we had to say about the pandemic. The pieces were so full of energy she decided we were to do a book and invited more women writers on her list to contribute. The poems and essays came in so fast that Pamela was soon able to produce our finished book. Called  Pandemic Carona: Poems of Shock, Fear, Realization and Metamorphis by the Sisters of the Holy Pen which you can now order on Amazon.

This project saved our sanity and gave us purpose. And most important it kept us writing and I was able to regain my sense of relevance. The book itself is a diverse collection of voices some intentionally ordinary and full of love, some brilliant at times profound. It is a capture of the arc of this pandemic and its impact on us collectively. We did a book reading this week on zoom for 29 of the writers hosted by Bookwoman an independent bookstore in Austin Texas attended by some 70 people. The reading a performance that was part ceremonial, part intimate revelation. It was recorded so you can soon enjoy it at your leisure. 

Nevertheless as we approached June I had been alone so long I started to feel the edges of the abyss, the sense that if I didn’t work at holding it altogether I would unravel into some sort of crazy fractured despair. I was no longer as captivated by the discoveries of the evolving virus and the shenanigans of the current administration threatening to collapse our country. I kept in mind an astrological interpretation of 2020 which described a year of turmoil as long held assumptions and structures were challenged, but clarity would come sometime in December it promised. As I wondered how this turmoil would manifest George Floyd was killed and society broke open with rallies led by Black Lives Matter. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. If this was the turmoil we needed to process (yet again) we could do this. Race was something every American had to address in some fashion and had a handle on though likely not the same handle, but at least a perspective from which to begin. In short order just about all the books on the New York Times bestseller list was about race. I was touched by the interest my white women colleagues showed in rolling up their sleeves to get a grip on white fragility and structural racism so that a solution might be found and applied. I also came to understand through Black activist contacts that white women were far from considered trustworthy (largely because of their role in lynching history and now as Karens) and had to work super hard to offset this distrust. I came to the conclusion that only with a Black woman in leadership would we regain any sort of feminist credibility. (Go Kamala Harris.)

I listened to podcast discussions of American History including the 1619 project and a much more comprehensive series of podcasts called “Seeing White” and “The Land That Never Has Been Yet”. This last title a quote from Langston Hughes. 

Seeing American history through the eyes of slavery and the cruel brand of capitalism that evolved from it along with the associated societal disdain for the poor was a perspective that actually made me feel better about the current administration. When Trump was first elected I felt that the GOP had pulled off a coup which was an alarming concept even for a Thai. But from this historical perspective I saw that the U.S. had all along contained this element of bias for wealthy white men and Darwinistic cruelty for those who couldn’t cut it in this supposed land of opportunity. This made me feel that the core of this country was still stable in nature; it had just been backsliding rather terrifyingly.

It allowed me to see that those who managed to succeed at all in such a country were heroic. This was a helpful concept. It reminded me of the Buddhist teaching that all life is suffering. So we were doing well if we managed not to suffer. 

Out Onto The Streets

I attended the Black Lives Matter rally in Redwood City which happened early on while we were still in quarantine and was well attended. I was pleased to see the large presence of white people and subsequent rallies through the largely white towns of Woodside, Half Moon Bay, Palo Alto and Menlo Park. In Menlo Park I attended the LGBTQ+Black Lives Matter rally held on the anniversary of Stonewall. I pulled out my vintage “Queer N’Asian” t-shirt and made myself a little Black Lives Matter sign. The t-shirt gave me claim to being a part of queer history. I hadn’t felt such a sense of belonging in a long time especially as a woman of color and now as an elder asking the young women if I could photograph them.

Having given my time to Black Lives Matter I reserved a little space to present my own cause by presenting myself as a butch lesbian in a post on Facebook. Most Americans don’t read me as butch because I am Asian and have kept my hair long. And Asian women are so highly fetishized as sexual creatures that they are seen as a dish for men (and thus assumed to be straight and femme). So in order to counter act these assumptions I posted a picture of myself wearing my Fruit of the Loom tighty whities. This classic garment being the only male garment not appropriated by women so could still truly be said to be cross dressing. I paired it with a wife beater tank top and photographed myself from overhead while lounging on my bed in classic pseudo pin-up fashion. It got my point across. See it here. 

I wouldn’t have to do this in Thailand where I am read as a Tom the slang term for masculine presenting women. Tom is short for tomboy and also means lesbian. I was assured of this presentation by my housekeeper when I mentioned to her that I was going to lunch with my Tom friend. 

“Are you a Tom too,” she asked.

 “A little bit,” I said. 

“More than a little bit,” she responded. I smiled broadly pleased at this reading. That was another perk ofbeing in Thailand. I am seen for who I am. And the visibility of other butch lesbians in Bangkok is prevalent. 

I was making myself visible to my Western audience in order to maintain this aspect of lesbian culture especially in these times of makeover by the transgender movement. 

Thai people already understand what a transgender person is. There is the term katoey used to identify those (mostly men) who are cross dressing and presenting as women. They do not hold the same status as women, but they have a place in society that goes back through history. Most Asian societies have this category in their lexicon. Similar to Native American society under the name Two Spirit.

It was because of the term katoey that I knew I would have a place in Thai society. The explanation for this transgender presentation is explained as most things in Thailand are by the concept of karma and reincarnation. I was told that I still carried the spirit of a boy implying that I had been a man in my last life. The idea that transgender people are persons who are trapped in the wrong body would seem beside the point to a Thai. The whole point of incarnating is to work through your stuff where you now find yourself which is as a man or a woman. Though Thailand being the sex change capital of the world is eager to accommodate those who wish sex reassignment surgery. Because if you can have it why not? The Thais are as much about acquisition as any consumer society.

Given this reincarnation karma story you would likely call this a religious ideology and I’m fine with that. But by the same token I can also claim that the idea of a person being trapped in the wrong body is an ideology. One that is being enabled by the “new” science of gender. Such science has proven that those who are transgender have the brain of the sex they identify with. Society needs science to prove such things because of the logic of American civil rights. For in order to legislate protection for those who face prejudice from others who would enact violence or bias against us it is best that such characteristics be determined to be immutable. 

In other words it’s not a choice or a psychological aberration. Because after all we are a self flagellating moral society and if it were a choice or a psychological aberration we would be obliged to fix it to conform to societal mores. And if science says you were born in the wrong body then by all means let us alleviate the stress of this suffering preferably wth medical intervention as we do every other condition in this over-medicalized society so we can make some money off it and contribute to the GNP.

The ideology of karma makes for better stories about past lives which includes historical circumstances and some artistic nuances in the telling. A psychic is the professional you would call to help you see into this past. But mostly we just shrug and leave it to the mystery of not knowing. Remember mystery? That element of awe and how to live with what you cannot know with a hope for the poetic justice of karma in the end.

Cancel Me This

An opinion in Thailand does not require a response. To object to it would be to seek conflict which would cause suffering and that would just not be a good practice of Buddhism—to intentionally cause more suffering. But here in the West we have elevated an opinion to such a point that people are publicly reviled, lose their jobs and their reputations while attempts are made to prevent them from speaking further. 

I read a few analysis to understand this phenomena. Call-out culture I learned was largely due to Twitter empowering those who usually don’t have a podium. From the perspective of the status quo it was mob rule. And this technology had empowered young people, African Americans and Trans Activists one article stated. I remember being young and gay recklessly making declarations and refusing to trust anyone over 30. The second category wasn’t surprising given the history of this country. But this final category; how did this tiny .01% minority become so virulent?

The best way to explain this last category is through the shallow lens of American pop culture. You will no doubt remember that five years ago Bruce Jenner became Caitlin Jenner in a manner so public it put the whole trans story into the public eye and explained the idea of a man trapped in a women’s body. And because Jenner had access to not only the finest plastic surgery that money can buy but the glamour arm of Hollywood the results were absolutely spectacular. Americans love a story of transformation and glamour and ate it up. The story might have ended there, but for the political aspects of the trans movement and the ongoing violence enacted on transgender people. This violence targeted at any gender nonconforming, cross dressing individual, but because of the popularity of the transgender story it became mainly about transgender individuals. And how to protect those individuals.

Both the United States and the UK took steps to protect transgender people basically by inserting the word gender into all the discrimination clauses where the word sex had originally been inserted to legislate equality between the sexes i.e. men and women. This change had an impact on the protected class of women. But before we could even get a grip on what this might mean cancel culture determined that anything that was not pro trans was bad whether it had an impact on natal born women or not. And that’s how J.K. Rowling became the poster child of transphobia. And by trouncing the writer of this most popular children’s book series of all times every liberal straight person could now virtue signal their support for the T in the LGBTQ alphabet without even fully understanding what any of it meant. And trans activist could use the headlines trouncing the author for being a transphobe to further present all the pro trans ideology as established fact (to fill the vacuum of this absence of understanding). 

When I read these articles I was struck by the calm matter of fact language used to establish an authority that was not to be denied with links thrown in liberally to “prove” that these facts were not to be contested. And when I followed the links  I found more of the same style of language interpreting science based research that basically came down to opinions rooted in an authority that was backed up by nothing more than the lived experience of a trans woman. 

This illusion of authority was so complete that it took me a few minutes to realize that we were allowing a person who transitioned as an adult and had no actual lived experience as a girl to comment on both the lives of young girls and how their social lives operated. And that I in fact had more authority having come out much earlier than my peers in the context of an all girls school. A school that came to be known in the psychiatric community as the hotbed of eating disorders and other self harming practices due largely to the incredibly high expectations placed on girls being groomed to leadership as stated by the school mantra or at the very least the trophy wives of the rich given the demographic.

It is in the arena of high school that trans ideology is having its biggest impact and had come to the attention of research scientists given that the number of teenage girls seeking sex reassignment surgery had shot up by 4,400%. Seventy times what it had been before which was so negligible that it couldn’t even really be counted. Before 2016 the number of gender dysphoric kids had been predominantly pre-school age boys. 

The moment the first research study was published it was debunked and cancel cultured into disgrace by trans activists. But the researcher prevailed, apologized for any offense taken and successfully republished the paper with just a few clarifications on methodology. But further research has been stymied and gone underground. Nobody wants death threats just for doing their job. But a brave journalist did publish a book on the phenomena of this trans contagion among girls which I have duly read and reviewed here. It’s a compelling read of sociological significance.

Meanwhile almost no girls seemed to be identifying as lesbians anymore. Lots of lesbians in my age group wanted to be boys as children including me (and we are all glad we remained women). So what was going on during an era that is supposedly so gay positive. Or was it?

Gay Liberation No More

When I came into the movement post Stonewall it was determined that to be accepted by the public we needed to present ourselves as ordinary people. Ordinary in the sense of being just like anybody else, wanting to live quietly with our chosen partners, get married and have a family. This line of thinking required the right optics i.e. that we also look and act like straight people and basically keep our fabulousness off the streets and safely cordoned off to the night club act and movies as entertainment for y’all. In the process of this assimilationist strategy we threw all the gender non-conforming and poly pansexuals and what all under the bus. And that naked man with the boa constrictor who appeared in all the San Francisco Pride parades at the time.

Liberals embraced gay marriage as their virtue signaling token issue and haters targeted gay youth and gender non-conforming individuals. To assuage this wrong and the accompanying guilt of the assimilationist strategy the movement now feels that the time has come for the T in LGBTQ to be the focus of the times. And that California schools are to be apprised of all the various flavors of our rainbow down to our many sexual preferences and gender non-confirming presentations including the whole brain in wrong body thing to prevent further bullying of our people. As a result or maybe as a clever workaround to the ordinary vanilla male and female stereotypes being described in the process the number of those identifying as non-binary entering college has shot up along with the incidences of transitioning. While the number of out gay youth seem to be disappearing per the observations of my peers. Homophobia was clearly still at large.

Last year to get a feel for this transgender era I took myself to the Trans March the weekend of Pride. I immediately noticed all the Toms—the Asian girls presenting as butch, arm in arm with their femme counterparts. And I was delighted to see Latina Toms too. I also photographed the proud shirtless transman showing off his bare flat chests for us. There were what I used to think of as drag queens—gay men with more style than could be contained in one gender to paraphrase a drag queen movie of the ‘90s. One in a wonder woman outfit. And lots with a more vintage slightly dowdy style I used to recognize as transvestites—straight men who like to dress as women (and were observed by gender scientists to be sexually aroused by this, but this autogynephelia is now considered a transphobic concept). There were also young children identifying as trans accompanied by their entire family. And a dour androgynous woman holding a flag I didn’t recognize striped in olive white and violet. It was the “gender queer” flag I was told upon inquiry with some annoyance. My favorite flag was a transgender flag with the words Trans Queer Witches Against Fascism scribed across it with a drawn glyph of pagan and gender symbols. Standing next to the flag was what I used to recognize as a lesbian with the fade haircut now popular with butch lesbians. On their shirt a button proclaiming the pronoun “he”. My photographs organized for you here. 

The takeaway of my foray into this brave new queer world was that it was so splintered into factions that nobody would look anyone in the eye let alone smile. So much depended now on defending one’s identity. Because apparently it wouldn’t be apparent otherwise. The chalked messages on the sidewalk gave me a clue of the underlying pain. “I Am Trans Enough” and “Let People Be Themselves”. I realized that this movement both included me as an Asian Tom and rejected me as an American lesbian. It also empowered me to defend myself.

The very definition of lesbian being oriented around being a woman and being attracted to women seems to defy the very existence of trans women whose vocal activists have mounted such an aggressive public attack on women who don’t want to sleep with persons who have penises that they sound exactly like men who tell lesbians they haven’t met the right man yet. (Not all trans people have genital surgery so they are stuck with the equipment they were born with as it shrinks or enlarges in response to the hormones they are taking.) No comparable attack seems to be aimed at straight women. Maybe their appetite for penises is too intimidating. heh. Plenty divorced their husbands who wanted them to be lesbians to support their late blooming transgender lives.

Meanwhile online lesbian-only space has been completely excommunicated from social media platforms. Even the ever tolerant kink community can no longer allow their members to express their particular preferences if it involves only natal born women. I have though found an online group that regularly shows me photos of cross dressing lesbians hosted by a clothing company offering clothes for women affecting masculine style. This fashion group called Butch Fashion, Style & Care was the perfect cover for natal born women only. Fashion serving as a cover for a persecuted minority. I was able to post my lesbian stories and photos there and occasionally others would discuss the pros and cons of taking T (male hormones) or the best brand of binders to compress their chests into a male appearance. All closely moderated to stop any fights.

The trans identity has benefited the community greatly to be sure; it created a political category for gender non-conforming people and thanks to recent Supreme Court ruling this category is now to be protected from job discrimination. This was huge in my mind because it finally allowed all cross dressing persons to have a place in American society. 

I do not however think it a good thing that people are being punished and prevented from simply stating a preference for natal born women. Being able to state our sexual preferences was the main point of the gay movement. Not to allow this is homophobic. But now the bigger activist epithet is that I am being transphobic. Well have at it then. I’ve devoted my entire life to being free to express myself without fear of reprisal either from losing my job or by besmirching my reputation only now to have my voice canceled by my own tribe. 

A society that cancels what people can say so punishingly is practicing a self imposed totalitarianism. It is a mob rule that is stoked for revolution, but has no skill set for the long slow work of diplomacy and coalition building. It is adolescent and punch drunk from unaccustomed power. Reminding me of revolutions that having thrown over a society devolve into corrupt governments with little vision.

I have a long memory going back to a time that strived for freedom of expression and a live and let live openness to differences. One that allowed a certain curiosity to ask questions and a diplomacy in answering those questions. My values didn’t change; the world around me changed and my language dates me. I now regard anyone under 35 with suspicion. I feel like an old crank spouting insults.

American culture as many have pointed out denigrates and mothballs their elders. Another perk of going to Thailand was that my status as an elder gave me a reverence that was palpable in the sky train station as I pulled out my senior card. It made me feel seen and respected.

Now I am trapped here in this ridiculously shallow, polarized society that has so politicized everything that even wearing a mask in a health crisis is a political statement. But with little to lose I realized that I could afford to speak for the unfavorable positions as I saw them.

I have long been of crone age, but maybe curmudgeon would be a better fit. heh.

My Canadian Girlfriend

When I told my chiropractor that I was going to Vancouver to meet my Canadian girlfriend for the first time, he chuckled and said that in his guy world, men talked about having a Canadian girlfriend because it was better than saying they didn't have one at all and this way no one would expect them to bring her over for dinner. 

"She must give good e-mail," commented my friend Tian when I announced that I had bought my plane ticket on Facebook. 

"Do you know this woman?" asked my housemate Steve when he saw my trip to Vancouver marked out on the kitchen calendar.

"We've been writing each other for a year and three months," I said.

"Is she in prison?" he asked slyly.

"Good one," I said laughing. The idea of cultivating a romance through letter writing is somewhat antiquated these days. It harks back to a more genteel time of carefully penned missives, days of waiting for the mail, scented paper perhaps with a pressed flower enclosed. But in today's e-mail world, letter writing is taken to a day by day, even hour by hour sharing of each other's lives while at the same time creating a world of our own in words with references back and forth to our word history, our shared narrative.

She found me on OkCupid a cozier, more off-beat dating site than Match dot com. She was reading

profiles for a bedtime story and came across mine. When she saw that I had listed one of her favorite films in my list of favorites she wrote to tell me how rare it was to see that title mentioned. Bagdad Cafe was a quirky independent film about two disparate female characters thrown across each other's paths at a remote truck stop in the Mojave dessert. It holds a place in my heart for it's cross-cultural, cross racial lines, art based collaborative story of an unlikely friendship. I felt compelled to answer her passing comment. And of course I checked out her picture. She had a cute round face with brown collar length hair and big glasses. She was mostly dressed to be outdoors in cargo, shorts and hiking footwear. She was amply curvy, a body type that I enjoyed; given my skinny frame I wanted the luxury of padding. It was her no nonsense take-it or leave it presentation that charmed me for she bore no trace of body image issues. Plus she was three years younger than me and this slight seniority appealed to me. So feeling in a playful mood for story collaboration I asked if she would indulge me in a game to get acquainted.

"Let's pretend I fly in for the weekend. You meet me at the airport as you would a friend from college you haven't seen in 35 years. We were close friends then, but there was an unresolved attraction that was alluded to, but we didn't stay in touch. The first thing you would likely say to me might be "You haven't changed a bit." What would be the first five things you would tell me about your life?"

From her answer I was delighted to learn that she had been in a writing program and had had two short stories published. The detail of having once lived on a nude beach in the Kootenays intrigued me. Her parents were dead and so was her sister from cancer so I knew she had gone through some hard stuff too. She worked odd industrial jobs to keep a roof over her head and her cat's. She currently worked in an herbal vitamin plant. All of these details indicated an unusual person with a taste for the off beat experience. I replied in kind beginning with "I never did run away to the circus…" and we were off and running writing regularly every few days. 

She ordered a copy of my book and discovered my many essays on my blog. So she was way ahead of me in getting to know my opinions on life while I kept a little distance in order to better get to know her. From the start she was solicitous of positive vibes for difficult events of her life so I gave of my support on this astral plane. Her enthusiasm for nick names and references to favorite children's books reminded me of a girlfriend from my '20s and this irked me. She sent me things, cards, the CD with the song from Baghdad Cafe and a calendar that I actually could use, but a map of Vancouver sent my already cluttered desk into overwhelm, plus I knew I wasn't going to send her stuff so felt guilty. She wanted to talk on the phone, but I was way too busy while she lived alone. So we Skyped, but I tried to be dull and slow so as not to encourage her. It was clear though that she had a big heart and once we shed the nicknames we could get real. She expected acknowledgement for her birthday. That wasn't too much to ask though I was lazy in matters of card buying. I made her a card I pretended had been put together by my dogs with photos of me with each dog purposely glued askew to the card. I included also a black feather from one of our dog walks.  "A crow feather just what I always wanted!" she wrote back pleased that I 'got her'. 

Sheilagh, for that is her name, was from a family knee deep in psychiatric nurses, doctors and therapists. I had had my share of the language of analysis from my therapist mother so we understood what each had been up against with being so off beat in a family that judged one's sanity rather too closely.

After a few months she wanted to come to San Francisco to meet me and I told her not to. In fact I was a little harsh about it. I knew that such a visit could not be half hearted for someone to come from so far away just to catch a glimpse of me when we were only newly acquainted. I didn't want the responsibility of showing her a good time for my life was just too full at the time with clients, canoe team practice and all my household duties and meal making at home with my ex and the dogs. That she wasn't phased by me living with my ex counted in her favor, but at the same time maybe that indicated a screw loose on her part. Not everything could be sussed out by words alone.

She drew back at my harshness, but we kept on writing and eventually she forgave me and I apologized for the harshness. I had not had a lot of practice saying no I told her. We followed each other's lives for the better part of a year. She telling me of challenges at work, me telling her about my interesting client situations and household events. She would hear my stories and give them a little literary summation that entertained me and offered insight. While I commented on her work life and tried to be helpful. 

Distance gave her liberty to be affectionate, but it gave me reason to be resistant for the idea of a long distance romance with all it's expense and logistics just didn't seem practical. I continued to discourage her by telling her I no longer cared for sex with anyone save for fantasies about sailors. She sent me a picture of a "sailor" sporting briefs from a gay men's underwear catalog. I had to hand it to her for coming back with such humor. In further discussions I could see that she really did accept my domestic living arrangements as one I had consciously chosen and had no judgement about it. Our friendship thus far was solid. 

Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

When I went to Thailand for my mud hut building workshop I had a sort of epiphany regarding our relationship. I told Sheilagh I would be gone ten days without a wi-fi connection (not having a smart phone). She also followed my frequent posts on Facebook and there was only one; I managed to upload a photo of a new outfit by tapping into a hot spot created by another mud hut builder on her phone. On the tenth day I picked up my e-mail. No one had written me except for Sheilagh. No one had seemed to care except for Sheilagh. 

"My Canadian girlfriend misses me," I told Cheyenne a fellow builder from Australia who was swinging in a hammock looking at her phone.

"Oh that's sweet," she said. She asked me about her and if we had ever met. I appreciated that homophobia no longer existed for the young for she was interested in the details as with any romance being all of 24. I told her no, that Sheilagh had in fact wanted to meet me but I had said no.

"You said 'no'? You bitch!" she exclaimed. I laughed at this youthful response. "I would have been on a plane in a second," she said. This gave me pause. Did young people have so little resistance to borders and distance that they would spontaneously cross thousands of miles to meet an online dating prospect? I had no need of yet another long distance relationship. I had a hard time keeping up with friends in Thailand and the UK plus all those scattered across the US. But my perspective had been jolted from my complacency and I realized that I had grown fond of Sheilagh, had come to count on her presence and interest. And I was further moved that someone who only knew me online would miss me so deeply that an absence of 10 days had made her anxious for my return. Could a love relationship exist on nothing but words? 

That night I bought her a Christmas present — a wallet with many zippered compartments from our representative of a local crafts guild of refugees selling hand sewn bags made from naturally dyed cotton. I also bought a different zippered bag for Catherine whom I still cherished as family and was going home to for Christmas celebrations. I included in my package to Sheilagh a card from Bangkok and soap from another entrepreneurial endeavor of the mud hut builders. She received it with recognition that I had stepped up my appreciation for her.

Meanwhile I continued to meet women on OkCupid hoping for someone more local, but they either never wrote back after the cursory though pleasant coffeehouse meeting or annoyed me by testing me for deal breakers. The whole online dating thing was annoying me. People just didn't seem interested in getting to know me, but in how well I might fit into their parameters and world view. And some were so inept in writing skills I felt compelled to reject them myself. I reported my annoyances to Sheilagh and she reported that she too had found none of her dates interesting enough to pursue. 

I buried myself in a building project of which I sent detailed reports to Sheilagh that would bore most as I described wall building and reported the finding of the dried up corpses of dead rats. She sent me her cat's toy mouse to guard against further intrusion by live rodents. Then she sent me pictures when she was visiting her older brother on Salt Spring Island for Easter. And another of the view from the ferry crossing and one of a chicken from his back yard farm inviting me to visit. Plus a few more of the tiny house her brother rented to transitional types. This Salt Spring Island farm of her brother's was quite the place I thought.

"When's a good time," I wrote back. Then it occurred to me that I could go. Vancouver was not after all very far in terms of my recent world travels. It was only two and a half hours by plane and thankfully did not involve a different time zone for I was having a hard time recovering from jet lag in my old age. She also said she would take a few days off if I came. My unexpected announcement that I would come and see her threw her for a loop. I fixed a date for three weeks out and specified that having only enough to spring for airfare I would have to avail myself of her couch. This sent her into a frenzy of cleaning for she rarely let anyone into her apartment, only those who could appreciate its artistic abundance. Then she called me honey. 

"Does the default endearment really have to be honey?" I asked still prickly about traditional terms of romantic engagement. I suggested Dahling in the manner of the silly British show Absolutely Fabulous. But maybe I was being too British in my reserve. I began to question why my heart was so locked up. There was a time when I threw myself into love with all the obsession that I now reserved for shoemaking and building projects. But those adolescent like obsessions were mostly projected onto women I didn't know and was trying to make into something I longed for. This did not always turn out well. So I was cautious for I did not know what my natural inclinations were with eyes wide open so to speak. And I wished to maintain our creative edge, not take up traditional scripts. She called me Deer. I wrote her back with "My Moose Deer Canadian girlfriend," and signed it "your American girlfriend where the Antelope play". She loved that.

"Dear Honey Bee" she wrote sticking to the animal theme, "auto text just made that Horny Bee". Horny Bee? Auto text innuendoes made me laugh and this one woke something up in me as well. We might as well go for it I thought. With only this one chance we should have no regrets about not having explored every possibility of being in the flesh as it were. This might be our one meeting. At any rate it would only work if we stayed firmly in the present.

"I am not as fit as I was when I was first going to visit you," Sheilagh wrote as the trip grew closer.

"Dear Ms. P., I am hoping you are quite pleasantly plump, the better to pillow with," I responded. She immediately inferred the reference to pillow talk, was delighted by my preferences and proceeded to feast at a buffet she was attending. I was pleased. I could not be with someone who didn't eat regularly and often.

And in telling me how much stuff she would have to rearrange to make me a bed on the floor she asked if I would mind sharing her spacious queen size bed. "I was thinking same," I wrote and we decided we would go directly to her home from the airport and have our way with each other. I told her too of Steve's suggestion that she was living in a prison.

"Yes," she wrote, "we have done the time and now we will do the crime."

Border Crossing Lesbian

When I arrived at the Canadian passport check the immigration officer asked me what was the purpose of my visit.

 "Love," I said with a smile. He laughed and said he hadn't heard that before and proceeded to grill me in a friendly way.

"Are you visiting friends? What will you be doing?"

"Yes and we are going to Salt Spring Island," I said remembering this magical name. This seemed to fit my outfit given my black suade vest over a red checked pirate shirt, my signature Australian leather bush hat on my head and waxed cotton jacket over my arm. He stamped my passport and wished me a pleasant visit. 

I came out of customs from a side door, the special Canadian Airlines door so stood looking for a few moments at the crowd. Soon I saw her coming towards me talking, looking just like herself. I gave her my best lesbian hug, gently squeezing her in a full body massage held for a beat longer than customary. 

"Thank-you," she said and I thought she meant for the hug. "Thank-you for coming". 

"You are smaller than I imagined" I said for she was about my height.

"So are you," she said and we began to walk towards the exit.

"Can I help you carry anything?" she asked. I had just a small bag on a luggage cart and a back pack.

"You can carry my hand," I suggested placing my hand in hers. And so we made our way out to the Sky train. The sun was shining on my afternoon arrival though it had been scheduled to be overcast.

It wasn't far to her stop in one of those transitional city neighborhoods of low rent older buildings and a hipster coffee shop edging in. She had told absolutely everyone of my impending arrival, she said, so when we ran into her friend Al, a friend I had not been scheduled to meet I felt this was a fortuitous occurrence that would carry the weekend.  And he was pleased to meet me too and didn't keep us long. 

Soon she was letting me in the door of her apartment and it was indeed abundant with her things. She had told me how sparseness reduced her to tears in those characterless, artless, bookless homes. I had assured her I liked having lots of things to look at. And she did indeed have most of her walls covered in framed art each chosen for its own merit not just to "go with" anything, plus collections of treasures on table tops and bookcases arranged to make statements of their own. Her many bookcases filled with literary books I recognized and many unknown to me. It was a small apartment for such a life rich in possessions, but I was used to sizing up collector homes and my professional eye soon saw that what many would see as clutter was perfectly functional. The apartment had its own order as her mother had stated when she was young. And it was organized into appropriate living sections with only an overflow of coats on the back of a chair that fell over when I added mine to it. I picked up the chair, rearranged the coats and sat down on her home made couch admiring the rock solid sturdiness of it. There was a box of chocolates tucked against the arm. I opened it.

"Watch out for one's with bites in them," she warned. I picked one of these up, looked at the revealed soft center said "This looks good," and ate it. She laughed and turned her head away slightly in embarrassment perhaps. "That's one of the advantages of living alone", she said. Then said she needed to lie down after all this excitement. So we had a nap and then got to hugging and I kissed her thirstily as though emerging from a long drought. 

"Well that broke the ice," I said as we got ready to go out to dinner and the documentary movie she had picked out for us at the film festival in town. The film was sold out so we came home and had our way with each other and again the next day (in case you were counting). And I would look at her and see the familiar face I knew from pictures, but also the face I didn't know; the face not presented to the camera. She had one that would look at home in another era, a vintage face behind those modern glasses. Her movements too were something to discover, quick and efficient, but leisurely when we were not catching a train. The cadence of her speaking voice fit the voice I knew from her letters, but the pitch and timbre of it I was still getting to know. The novelty of these additional features adding to my pleasure.

Salt Spring Island

In the meantime I enjoyed Vancouver. Canadians struck me as remarkably friendly. It was so odd seeing people who looked like Americans, but were, in fact that wonderfully progressive and sensible northern neighbor.

"I like your hat," people told me, "I like your coat". Those two items that made me look suspicious in my own neighborhood made me feel at home in Vancouver. "Canadians love everyone", Sheilagh assured me. And it was not because they were a homogenous population. I was surprised to see so many Asian people living in this town. 

That night we went on a dance and dinner cruise down the Fraser river which favored us with a lovely sunset. We were joined by her best friend from grade school and ex boyfriend from art school who was now gay. A lesbian couple, older than us, sat down at the next table and when I asked how long they had been together, they said "20 years".

"We've been together two days," I said enjoying the effect of a good romantic story. 

I had also met her middle brother Bob the psychiatrist who rode down to meet us on his bicycle for a coffee after tai chi class. When I mentioned my clients he wanted my professional opinion on his sister's home. This annoyed her intensely when she asked what we talked about for all of two minutes while she was in getting coffee. 

The next day we took the ferry through the Gulf Islands. The sun gracing us in a landscape of such beauty I was in awe. Another smaller ferry took us to Salt Spring Island which had an atmosphere of long summer days by the water's edge with all the wooden piers hanging over the water. 

We were met at the bus stop by Lois, her ex-sister in law who offered us a bag of hot donuts to welcome me. I was feeling like a visiting dignitary. Sheilagh had clearly  been talking about me and was now introducing me to every significant person in her life. Her older brother David came to pick us up in his truck shouting out the window "Hey crazy cat lady" when he saw her. We wandered through the farmer's market filled with stalls of artisan crafts and gourmet foods. I was impressed by the caliber of the goods made by these local artists; it was worthy of a juried show. Clearly Salt Spring Island was something special to draw all this talent. Sheilagh said the island was why she had moved to Vancouver so she could come any time as she had been doing since her brother moved there when he was 19. He had a blasting business blowing up rocks mostly for construction. He commented as we drove through the rural countryside with its roller coaster hills. 

"We are now entering the Tofu curtain," he said. He pointed out a neighbor named Rainbow walking alongside the road. 

"What does she do," asked his 12 year old daughter from the back seat.

"The usual hippie things, massage, herbal remedies."

He took us to Kismet Cafe a coffee shop in the woods to see a sample of local inventiveness. It was full of scavenged architectural details worked into the walls and garden that made me want to look closely to see how things were put together.

David's own home charmed me with its backyard farm and chicken coop plus a glorious tiny building made of rogue logs gathered from the water, runaways from local mills. The logs had been stood upright and caulked together making a square hut. It had a living roof of grasses. This unusual hut was his sauna which we would later make use of, Sheilagh having built a fire in the wood stove as soon as we arrived. David's daughter making us a dinner of quinoa and veggies.

My trip was purposely short so no one would have a chance to get tired of me I reasoned. While waiting for the bus to the ferry which would take me on to the airport the following day, I talked to Sheilagh for quite a long time about how uncertain my future was with all the plans Catherine was making as she visualized different scenarios for her own future as well as options I had for living in Bangkok, or traveling for a bit. This was why I held so firmly to the present to keep the chaos from exploding my head I explained. We had succeeded in not speaking of the future, nor did we make further plans, satisfied that we had wrung out of every moment of our four days together all that we could soak up. But we would, of course, still write. 

We held hands on the Skytrain all the way to the airport no one giving us a second glance those most tolerant Canadians. Then shared one more hug and kiss, before I walked through the gate. 

"Thank-you for coming," she said ever the polite Canadian. 

"Thank-you for having me," I replied. And as we returned to our correspondence I felt my previous prickly resistance and caution drop away now that I had fathomed her realness. 

A few days later she sent me a link to a dating site specifically for Americans who wanted to hook up with Canadians in advance of a Trump presidency. 

"I'm such a trendsetter," I said.

Report From The Writing Front

You may have noted, dear reader, that my postings have become more infrequent, disappearing entirely over the last 6 months. Partly I felt that the terrain of blogging had changed and the 16 hours or more I put into an essay were reaping diminishing returns. Or I had changed and people weren't reading my essays as much now that they were more personal. Or they had migrated to FaceBook where snippets of personal news are easier to digest. FaceBook had also become my go-to platform for it offered more interaction, more discussion about issues that were germane to my contacts without me having to create the whole discussion through my essays. 

I have also been wondering what I had to show for all my efforts as a writer. Archiving the essays online didn't have quite the same sense of accomplishment as a book. My essays I feared might not have shelf life given that they were compelling because they were happening to me in real time and had the freshness of letters. Things might look less relevant over the long haul. I had also in the past loved to report on new adventures I was undertaking, sometimes going to an event just to write about it, but this last year I have repeated events so no longer had something new to report. 

There had also been physical adventures like falling off my Xootr (push scooter) and having to get 7 stitches on my chin. After which I realized I was exhausting myself. I had become strong and overconfident doing too much too fast having joined an outrigger canoe club (hoping to meet women) which required weekly practice in the bay just beneath the Golden Gate Bridge. Spectacular, but very windy that week. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I've never been the competitive type and this team were hard driving champions. The practice boosted my muscle strength then proceeded to wear me out, plus it was an hours drive each way to get to the boat yard.

In falling off my Xootr, the hard rubber of the wheels slipped out from under me in the light misty rain just as I was leaving home for a networking meeting. Luckily I fall well and didn't break any bones by sticking out my hand and insisting that the earth stop coming at me. I gave credit to my weekly karate class where I have trained non-competitively for over 20 years (for the rigors of old age I see now). But the road was hard and rough when I slammed against it not like the mat in our dojo. I picked myself up and (without getting any blood on my clothes) drove myself to the emergency room, proud to have done so. A huge bruise welled up on my thigh and weeks of sessions with my chiropractor ensued to put my hip joint at ease again. 

I cut down on excessive self-propelled mobile jaunts. I quit the canoe club and dating. I had made friends dating, but serious dating was a slow business. Nobody had time to just hang out anymore; women were holding up a list of wants and don't wants, searching for the right person to mesh with their complicated lives and mine was no different.

And finally the things that were happening of interest in my life involved family members so were not my stories to tell. Suffice to say that my mother had become a snow bird living half the year with her new boyfriend in a gated community on a golf course near Palm Springs. My good friend Dave had moved to Oregon with his mother depriving me of regular lunch dates. Others had retired becoming busier. My own household with Catherine and her brother remained stable. Catherine and I get along better now that we are not "together" together. We go to movies, share meals and keep house like old pros, but we don't plan the future or talk about it in more than general terms. This makes life spacious with time.

Current news of my life had been my bread and butter as a blogger, but now I was drawn to other subjects. The parts of my life that still lay submerged like the two thirds of the proverbial iceberg. The parts that happened before the internet, before our daily sharing of details with our 'contacts', our virtual village. What was I missing by ignoring this dark past? 

I had often thought about writing another book and had been looking for a topic, but nothing seemed worthwhile for the amount of effort books seem to take. (My last book had taken 10 years to write.) I saw time differently now that I placed upon it an hourly fee as a freelance professional organizer. What could I possibly write (want to write) that would be worth my hourly rate payable at time of service? 

A Book Beckons

Last year I had a reunion with my now dispersed writer's group. The writer's group that had so lovingly helped me in the writing of Diamonds In My Pocket when we met monthly to read our work together. We had not met in 10 years, but in the weekend we spent together in a remote beach house by the sea, I remembered the value of a writing life. The literary aspirations and lofty goals of a book, the satisfaction of leaving a legacy. So over lunch on the ride home I told a handful of my writing pals my dilemma of time versus book value.

Connie who had found satisfaction in the writing of books above even the raising of her children was the natural leader of our group and spoke first. 

"Your dilemma is that you were raised to expect an inheritance which never came," she said referring to my Thai family history. Connie knew about these things; her entire writing life had been supported by an ample trust fund from her family's orchards in Southern California. It was generous of her to point that out about my life. That as a writer I had had to put most of my effort into supporting myself. 

Though others in the group had had to work too, most could go home from their job and devote their off hours to writing without having to worry about the security of their job hanging on their off hour skills. Skills in marketing which also required writing and sending out a newsletter, say, to flag down customers. The repetition required to tout my services as an unequivocal benefit to the customer in myriad ways was just not my style. I did it sparsely knowing full well that if I devoted even half the effort I put into those essays I would have enough customers to put aside my insecurities (or at least know I had tried). The happy result was that sometimes the essays themselves would flag down a rare customer or two who appreciated the lengths at which I was willing to reveal myself. (One had even downloaded my book to read because she could not find anything else about me.)

Two of our writers did have the self-marketing piece of it to contend with at some time in their lives. Helen had made her living as a potter selling mugs and salad bowls at craft fairs. She had also been raised by a painter who had been intentionally supported by her mother working a job outside of the home. (David Park whose work is now hung in SFMOMA and the Legion of Honor.) Her entire upbringing had wrestled with the dilemma of funding the life of an artist. An upbringing that also informed her that an artist had intrinsic value just in the work he/she did even though it didn't necessarily pay the bills. Her book about her father was a huge contribution to these values. Helen spoke her answer to my question with thoughtful intention.

"Choose a topic that will sustain you in the writing of it to the very end," she said. I let this sink in. Let the perspective of it push my mind around to the value of writing and its intrinsic ability to sustain me as a writer. A perspective that put aside even the needs of a reader who may or may not care about what topic I chose. I had once felt that my readers needed the information I was so able to explain, because this information had changed my life in some incremental or significant way that had led to lifestyle changes that they too might benefit from. 

Information like this was now more easily passed around on FaceBook and Twitter through articles that other people wrote which might include references, graphs, charts and the opinions of professionals. Viewers would comment and start a dialog that was pertinent to their lives within the context of their virtual village of contacts. There was still room for the personal essay, but somehow not quite as compelling. I could post a picture with a short caption to let people know what I was up to in a fraction of the time, but not everybody was on Facebook. And some, bless them, preferred a written narrative.

Choosing a topic that would sustain me to the very end was a refreshing perspective. At first I addressed it pragmatically and thought I might like to compile a book of recipes for my personal reference for all the clever eco-minded household things I had made like my fire starter tea bags which were dried tea bags drenched in wax melted in my solar oven. And my baking soda hygiene regime which had virtually eliminated store bought sundries from my bathroom. Not to mention the unique design of my urine diverting portable composting toilet. 

Connie had published a book of recipes called The Muse of Menus. We had all been proud of this book because it was the first one of many our group had published. It was enjoyable and accessible and bore the mark of Connie's unassuming literary style. A straight forward book with an unambiguous premise to hand down her family stories to her descendants. My collection of recipes evoked more questions. I wasn't handing down a family legacy; I was compiling a certain philosophical attitude about a life that had veered off the mainstream so much I had neglected to have a family to hand down to. 

It struck me that it wasn't so much the recipes that were interesting, but why one would want to do all these alternative things in the first place. Because, apart from my tea bag fire starters, plenty of others were demonstrating the making of these off-grid ideas on Youtube and Pinterest. What was missing from these online offerings was an overarching narrative, a story that would tell of a paradigm shift underway carried out by those who were living it. Now there was a topic I could imagine delving into.

A Door Opens

As it happens when I become interested in a direction something or someone comes along to offer support. I had over the last two years been studying a spiritual path guided by the archetypes of the Tarot which I accessed through Shamanic journeying. (And no, I have not shared this story because the writing of it would make it into something else altogether which would cease to help me, but you can ask about it). My Tarot teacher Pamela had also decided to write her memoir and was creating a group of like minded writers to provide structure and support. 

I had already attended Pamela's workshop on publishing where she had pointed out that the same technology that had brought huge changes to the music industry was rapidly changing the book publishing industry. Via print-on-demand technology authors could now publish their own books for the same cost per book as large publishing houses. To be sure such means meant a much smaller audience, but what did it matter? Books do not as a rule make authors a living. They were the back room sales of many an entrepreneur on the lecture circuit who made their living doing what they wrote about. Some of these books were a marketing project on steroids, but the ones of substance were a container for their methods and knowledge, a sign of passion and commitment. A book gave the author authority on a topic much as a  Ph.D would, opening doors to more opportunities and more writing. It appeared that just as blogging had made publishing my essays so easy the same was now true of book publishing.

I saw my old writing group again for a poetry reading at Waverley Writer's a longstanding monthly event at the Palo Alto Friends meeting house where two of our poets were featured readers that night. Over dinner I told Helen I had found my book topic and told the group I was joining a new writing group. They were a trifle dubious about the credentials of my new teacher despite my stating her former status as a Stanford professor of anthropology and author of many books on Tarot. The Tarot piece sounded suspiciously New Agey to them; New Age books being a notorious genre for bad writing.

"I hope you won't let your good writing fall," said Connie.

"No I will raise up the standards of the group," I promised. I wanted to work with Pamela not because of her literary credentials, but because she set me on fire. Her enthusiasm was contagious and her cosmic sense of purpose rubbed off on me and bolstered the smallest effort into a life work.

The five women meeting in Pamela's cheerful living room were not veteran writers, but as we learned about story structure beginning with the call to adventure and ending with the transformation of the hero, I was not so worried about good writing; I was wrestling with finding what underlying theme would hold my story together.

The Muddy Middle

I had followed a trail of hand built furniture searching for my first build and found myself in that murky territory of a self before I knew who I was or had potential to be; those early college years. College being nothing like what I had expected, it was not a pleasant remembrance. In fact it was downright unpleasant. Unlike the territory of my first book which gave me back Thailand and all the warmth of my childhood memories that healed my homesickness, the territory of this book was cold hearted and uglier than the Brutalist architecture of my college campus. But the act of looking at this time was changing and shaping the narrative as I grew compassion for myself. There was revealed a glimmer of a self that would not be broken. And this act of memory transformation was a healing elixir in itself. So I was hooked. Writing a book filled the voids in my life and was better company than a relationship I realized.

I searched for an underlying theme that might run through this territory, a unifying framework and, finding none, attempted to work backward from the end of the book, but that was even worse. How was I to know what was the end? I picked another part of my life to explore that included my passion for building, but then it sounded like an entirely different book. I reported back to Pamela's writing group and they weren't getting anywhere either except for one member who had run with her second story to write a screenplay. A cross cultural, bi-racial lesbian coming of age love story set in Geneva. Totally hot in the telling of it for she wrote beautifully with a classic literary style that was unmarred by puritanical self hatred. We all urged her to make it into a movie.

I did not want to write a lesbian coming of age love story though it was my favorite kind of love story. I wanted to write about making stuff. Was there a story in the making of stuff? It wasn't exactly a genre. But there were lots of themes—self-reliance, sustainability, purpose, creativity, collaboration. How these elements had motivated me, how the people I met inspired me, all those places I had been where I learned something. There was also a hint of some underlying psychological imprint linked to my past that I was seeking to rectify. Somewhere in there I knew was a story that would sustain me to the end. Unravel for me the source of my weirdness.

I was in what our memoir writing textbook called The Muddy Middle. Committed but with no end in sight. Too far in to back out. Searching for every available angle. Fretting about its future much as one would a new relationship. 

No idea how long I'll be here so I thought I'd offer an update to my extended family of real-time readers. You who share my journey so that I might have company. Next month I will be in Thailand for another mud hut building event where I hope to garner further perspective or at least some more Facebook friends like so many barnacles on a long ocean voyage.