4 thoughts on “”

1. Hi Eric, This is an interesting little post/comment. I feel this myself. Last year I met a group of 7 people between 22-38 coming from their German Language School in Indonesia and was invited out to a birthday dinner for one of the group. She paid for all, 8 courses. After that we all went to a karaoke complex hired a room and sangg songs in Indo and English drinking long-necks. I became the birthday girl’s special birthday present, or let myself be. As I was soon to discover my new lover was in fact, trans, and also Aquarian, with Sun sextile Uranus in Sag and Mars in Aries trine Uranus. My friend comes from a line of ‘dukan hitam’, Sumatran animist black magicians even though Muslim.

   I had 2 choices, walk away from my new friend who I liked very much as a sophisiticated intelligent sexy person or continue to hang out together and to her home in Bali. I decided the latter and what an intersting journey this has been. With my libran Sun sextiling my Mars in Leo we had some heated and emotional arguments. I came to the conclusion that we met each other at the right time and for the reasons to expand our conscious awareness. My friend dreams of having a life partner, a straight male.

   She and I call my friends she because I can see and acknowledge that she has chosen to live as a woman. She has been living trans since 18, and taking hormones which produces obvious physical changes and physiological. I have got to know quite a lot of trans in Bali, and not on a sexual level but as my friend’s friend. Yes, we continued to have sex only occasionally because I have found the whole conceptr challenging. As my friend says, ah… I know u, you just think about meme (pussy). One day she intends upontaking the ultimate step and having gender re-assignment. It sure is an inteesting world. These girls while working the nightclub streets are reknown as scoundrels, are as I have found a barrel of fun and I found cosnideable mutual respect knowing the language to a basic conversational degree and my open-mindedness.

   You know Indonesia gets such a bad rap. From politicans who just want to scare monger us. Yet Indonesia is a progressive liberal Islamic society. You will here Sinead O’Connor or REM in shopping malls were most people go around with smiles unlike in my country where most people are grumpy and miserable and rude. Apparently it’s cool to be ‘whatever’. Yeah and their favoirte comedy stars an over-the-top gay guy. I also watched another Indonesian 3-part reality tv program that was a big hit in a roomm with 8 ladyboys. It was a military boot camp for trans competition. Absolutely hilarious and we were all in fits of laughter. In Indonesian society and Thai society these apparent anomalies are accepted. Many of the girls have close male friends, gay and straight and some with ostnsibly straight male boyfriends. I found this cultural accpetance to be so refreshing. Indonesia is cool in my book. Bob Marley is to Indonesia what Elvis is to the US, u know.

   Anyway I spnsored my friend for a tourist visa last year as the informal police force which protects the busines interests of the Balinese wnet out blockading the streets after dark and assaulting the ladyboys, hacking hair and leaving bruises. I saw 3 girls the next day with my friend who is the ‘hub’. In fact, I have never met anyone with such raw intelligence and entrepeneurial vision. I believe I found the perfect business partner and have supported her for a student visa here in Aust. She is so Aquarian a lightning bolt from another dimension, born with the Saturn-Uranus conjunction in Sag. We did several little flights to several places in Indo and everyhwere my friend goes she moves as a celebrity, a rock star, she is actually a reknown go-go dancer anyway. For her cultivating the image aside from her obsession with fashion attracts success. I am so glad we met because I have drawn much inspiration and courage through her. She is full of courage and power. She never felt comfortable in her body and felt like a girl since 11 or 12. Eric, I have considered the meaning of trans to as it relates to thransgender folk. To me they are neither here nor there, but moving, evolving through this at their own pace. A journey, quite amazing. Cheers, Brad

2. When I post a status to my FB, it is rarely a personal message … usually a good quote that inspired me and that I wish to share. But today, out popped from the recesses of my unconscious: “Life is all about creating Balance”. A friend replied, “that balance stuff is high maint … “.

   As a good analytical Virgo (I love remaining loyal to my sign), I subconsciously ruminated (as I’ve been doing for 7 years now) upon Why, today of all days, this thought and his response were so … compelling.

   I have avoided journalling for the past couple, three years because … my thoughts were All Over the Place, just festering, eating away at all things I’d held stable as if my drink of choice were boric acid. No rhyme, no reason … absolutely and intensely fueled by fiery emotions I’d once held … inappropriate, problematic, shameful, inexplicable. Emotions I’d hidden away so very effectively behind that “veil” you allude to, a symbolistic description I, again, inexplicably, was mesmerized by, confounded by. I didn’t understand it, could find no connection to it …

   But, I found myself, in true Virgo fashion, inhaling every article that I could find that might illuminate my path to its meaning, its connection to this inner wound that kept widening, weeping, festering.

   I discovered Jung, fascinated, but still … “what the hell is this “shadow self??” … still heavily in denial.

   I’ll not bore you with the further details of this journey that began in 2003 with me walking away from a 21 year marriage, explosively, uncharacteristically. My forays into what I thought was “sexual freedom”, but was, in reflection, simply my inner self Aching for nurturance, human touch, bonding, release.

   They thought I’d gone mad. I thought I’d gone mad.

   Today, though, I found my voice. In recent weeks, my computer had become my lover, reading for hours and hours … my fingers gracing the keyboard keys … knowing I should write, but not knowing how to start. I knew I was at the point of definition, but I still didn’t know the word I had to define.

   Today I found it. Balance.

   And, my fingers started flying across the keyboard, ideas spilling hungrily out of me. Yes, I finally found my voice. Voice that, again, in true Virgo fashion, will return me to what inspires my self-esteem, my confidence, my vitality: orderly organization of my thoughts, but this time embracing my individuality. Yes, another word that you threw out there that caused so much of my hungry research as of late.

   I replied to my friend … about this word “Balance” that was flashing in neon lights in my head:

   “It’s all a process that cannot be rushed according to a pre-described timeline … first one must become aware of years of ingrained, unconscious habits that cheat awareness. Then coming to terms that others are not causing this imbalance (stop blaming others for the negative reactions that well up inside).

   To me, it is all a very difficult process, but the worst is remaining in this consciousness until one can identify the externals that trigger negative and depleting responses and finding ways to let go … release … replace. It’s rather like an addiction to the past … it’s so much easier to go back to old habits that have become an instinctive way of relating. The hard work, to me, is not saying, “oh what the hell, I’m too old to change … I’ll never be able to re-learn.” Because it takes so much conscious time to replace. So much energy to stay in awareness.

   Life seems to just trudge forward at a snail’s pace. Work work work. Struggle struggle struggle. Push push push. What drudgery! … See More

   … then suddenly, without warning … things start coming together … ideas, concepts that electrify and illuminate, albeit fractured, disorganized, fleeting, I will admit. But the element of time changes. We start living in the present time, and in this present time one finally gets a glimpse of … Balance.

   Smiles vs. frowns; worry vs self-control; anger vs. joy; love vs. hate.

   Here is where the hunger starts. Hungry, greedy for more smiles, more self control, more love …

   Finally, no more high maintenance … just a simple hold upon Awareness of what creates …

   Balance.”

   Those seeds …. well, you have helped supply them to me … the seeds of “awareness, individuality, allowing, balance, etc.” And, I keep watering them diligently, obsessively at times, and even when they’d whither and die, I’d go back and find more words to sprinkle on the fertile earth.

   This “feeling” you say you are experiencing … I could immediately relate (Pisces ascendant). I’ve been dancing around it for weeks now, an energy, a brightness, a newness. Trying to vocalize it, but still, not understanding “from whence it came”.

   My friend replied, “true, I overlooked the construction cost. . . . ;~}
   & once you achievebalance, the bicycle becomes fun
   & when you land in the ditch, it’s easier to get up & going again”

   To which I promptly responded,

   “*grin*… I still have my training wheels on … doubt I’ll graduate to 2 wheels before the world comes to an end in 2012, but at least the training wheels don’t allow me to gain too much speed, otherwise those forays into the ditches would be much more catastrophic than the bumps and bruises to my heart now.”

   Yep, it’s been a wild ride.

   Love,
   Your faithful individual,
   Jill Owen

3. Hey Eric,

   I couldn’t respond on the website as I’m not set up with Word Press… but I wanted to send the following quote on the topic of living across genders. Funny, I just read it yesterday and loved it. Its from Rainer Maria Rilke – I love him. See if it works for you.  Peace, Tracie (an avid reader of yours)

   Excerpts from the 4th “Letter to a Young Poet”     (sorry its a little long but worth it)

   “Sex is difficult; yes. But those tasks that have been entrusted to us are difficult; almost everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious. If you just recognize this and manage, out of yourself, out of your own talent and nature, out of your own experience and childhood and strength, to achieve a wholly individual relation to sex (one that is not influenced by convention and custom), then you will no longer have to be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your dearest possession. …
    
   “If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery which the world is filled with, even in its smallest things, could bear it, endure it, more solemnly, feel how terribly heavy it is, instead of taking it lightly. If only they could be more reverent to ward their own fruitfulness, which is essentially one, whether it is manifested as mental or physical; for mental creation too arises from the physical, is of one nature with it and only like a softer, more enraptured and more eternal repetition of bodily delight. …
    
   “And in the man too there is motherhood, it seems to me, physical and mental; his engendering is also a kind of birthing, and it is birthing when he creates out of his innermost fullness. And perhaps the sexes are more akin than people think, and the great renewal of the world will perhaps consist in one phenomenon: that man and woman, freed from all mistaken feelings and aversions, will seek each other not a opposites but as brother and sister, as neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to bear in common, simply, earnestly, and patiently, the heavy sex that has been laid upon them.”

4. Being a transgendered person with a continual evolement over the past 15yrs ,its a happy place for me to be. Akin to being grey as opposed to black or white. Tapping into the forceful energies of male.female and sexuality allows my inner spirit to grow not constrained by the polarities that so many people are hand cuffed to.
   That said being Capricorn with the usual anvils that carries with that sign it has been a thoroughly questioning and introspective time over the years ,miraculously though an answer has always been forthcoming eventually. Reading back over the last four years when the metamorphosis became complete,how accurate you were Eric with my particular life path. Many of those questions were answered by you to my inner spirit. I relish your humanity,wisdom and compassion and the day I happened upon your website.

   With love
   Ana