last night i dreamt this elaborate dream. it started out with me fleeing to brazil with my family, for reasons i can't remember, & traveling in unlikely ways - in bare feet through the tropical foliage between houses, climbing under concrete bridges & through sewer pipes, trying to avoid poisonous plants & animals despite my complete ignorance of which ones were dangerous. this part of the dream ended when my family (not my actual family, but my family in the dream) and i started hiding in the corners of a huge house that belonged to a rich family, narrowly avoiding being seen over and over until finally one day they spotted us. they took up our cause (we had left our home country for political reasons), hosting us & holding fundraisers for us...


and then in the next part of the dream i was going to visit an apartment that i used to live in (in this city in brazil, and yes i know that doesn't make sense), and in which i had left an important book. the apartment was in two parts, an upstairs and a downstairs, separated by an outdoor staircase, so i could have just gone upstairs to get the book, but i stopped at the downstairs doorway for a moment to check in with the current occupant as to whether it was ok. they (i don't remember the person's gender, or whether it was relevant) ignored me for a good ten minutes, so i figured i would just go get my book...and ended up reading their journal, which was in a book marked 'instructions' right next to the book i'd come to get. then i went on their computer and saw that they'd found a letter of intent that i'd written and posted it on the internet.

after a long while in the dream i went back downstairs, and told the occupant that i'd gone up to get a book: they followed me outside their doorway and asked me if i was one of the political refugees (not their exact words) staying with that rich family. i asked them how they knew, and they wondered how 'could someone as obviously foreign as [i am], and someone so obviously fully transitioned, think [i] was incognito.' this threw me for a bit of a loop, since in the dream my body & gender presentation were the same as they are now, and i wondered for a while at the extreme presumption, and then wondered which way they were reading me as having transitioned. my dream logic went something like: huh. if they think i'm a 'fully transitioned' (whatever that means) ftm, then that's a bit odd because i definitely don't usually pass for a guy. and i guess they could be reading me as an mtf dyke, but would an mtf dyke wear a binder? and then i figured that people do indeed figure out their bodies & their genders in a multiplicity of ways and an mtf dyke might indeed bind, and that ultimately it didn't matter, but what an interesting assumption this person was making about my body.

and then they told me they would see me later that night at the film screening at my hosts' home.

and then i woke up, with back pain & a sore throat, & bright green leaves in my head.


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last night j shot t & i for that photo project, and it was fun and amazing. putting on my suit is obviously always fun, because it makes me feel extremely fancy for a change (in my usual life i'm habitually out-fancied by a lot of the people around me, & often i wish my clothes were fancier not in a money way, just in a better-put-together way). i don't know what it is with girl drag, but it's also fun in a weird way: putting back on for pleasure or art this gender that i felt so weird in.

i'm feeling a bit out of it. (i wonder how many posts i've started like that?)

i've been working so much overtime lately, staying til 6.30 or 7 and not feeling like it makes that much of a difference since it's dark starting at 5 anyway. it does make a difference though - by seven the small grocery stores that i went to in my hunt for kale are closed, i've accidentally skipped that q team meeting i had at 5.30 and forgot about, i haven't read the article on healthcare reform that i'm basing that essay on...

but i just wandered around in the falling snow, looking at peoples' faces & down at my boots, noting the twinge in my ankle & the extra work it takes to navigate the sidewalks this time of year, wondering how my schedule will fluctuate in the next few years. i hear nurses get up early.

this morning a technician looked at my internal organs with a sound machine, dictating my breathing, asking politely that i turn this way and then that, taking pictures of those most private parts: spleen, liver, kidneys, bladder. they found that old scarring on my right kidney (which reassured me somewhat, like proof that i didn't dream up that childhood partially spent in hospitals) and then they kept talking about cysts. i'm not sure what they meant.

the technician did a quick check of my uterus & ovaries, checking for endometriums, & everything looked good. bonus! really. a bonus, since usually repro stuff isn't part of a basic abdominal ultrasound.

in the time between tests, as my body was processing all that water they asked me to drink, i finished bastard out of carolina. dorothy fucking allison. what the...

i feel like maybe i wasn't looking down for a second - had my eyes focused up on streetlights & building tops & stars & the moon - and i guess i didn't see the hole right in front of me: not a wide one, just a few feet square, but deep enough for my whole body to fall into it. & now all i can do is look at the darkness around me & the stars above & the mineral reflections of the lights around me, sparkling earth.

i think the forward trajectory will push me out of it: painfully, and i'll probably get all scraped up, but i have a schedule to adhere to, and no time for beautiful refuges or traps, either.

maybe the next depression will be a wider one, and full of cold shining water to swim through & stay under & be borne up by - maybe it will last several months & bring me to the northwest, & through the exhaustion of swimming & the rest of floating (with tiny movements directing me, hands treading water) i'll be reminded of how good i had it on solid ground with the warmth & comfort of loved ones around me.

but right now i'm spoiled and all i want is a good long swim.