You are currently browsing all posts tagged with 'life'.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 28 entries.

Rolled up

  • Posted on February 9, 2020 at 5:39 pm

I come to you, not with baggage
but a rolled-up carpet, a rug
of dust, footprints and wear.
Sometimes it unrolls – something
pulls it back under my feet.
I hold its pattern, heavy, marked
by soles not just my own.
Textures and smells return years,
a memory becomes a feeling,
a footprint stands out, named.

You’re troubled by my silence,
unseeing where I stand
eyes dimmed, coursing, distant.
I’m still here, but so is everything,
not visiting but layered – sometimes
today is not opaque enough to see;
closure not what it seems.
You can seal a bag, but my rug,
my carpet, rolls on, past and present
curled close, over and over.

2019 © Andie Davidson

Kiss my breath

  • Posted on June 29, 2017 at 10:08 pm

it has entered
left and some is still of me

a little can be you
or may dispelstay free

some is morning
is cloudsat night

stirring of wings
of leavesand flight

open as windows
like my heartand mouth

stirring in curtains
from eastthen south

some is yawning
or laughterand delight

a little lies in stillness
or a skylarkat its height

it has flown
touchedan ancient sea

kiss beginnings
kiss my breathkiss me

 

2017 © Andie Davidson

Happy anniversary

  • Posted on July 18, 2015 at 7:07 pm

My partner went to bed at about 3am this morning. She did’t wake me, because my phone was switched off and her messages from Germany only popped up this morning. Before leaving this week, she had left me a beautiful pair of earrings and a card, with a keyring inscribed ‘you are loved’, tucked secretly in the back of a drawer.

Rather than write a long and philosophical blog this week, I just want to celebrate my first anniversary, of perhaps the most significant day in my life so far.

This day last year I woke to no breakfast, only the promise of an enema. Oh; and surgery. I waited longer than expected, and for a while sat writing my thoughts in my notebook. I never copied them out, but here they are:

This is a bit unexpected. I awoke so peaceful and calm. It is not that the coming hours are matter-of-fact. But there is something of a watershed here. A grand leaving behind of a whole side of life, about which, yes, there is some relief, but mostly just that it’s true. It’s a strange thing to see and touch part of yourself that has been important and know that soon it will be gone. Mainly, though, I’m full of wonder that how I shall soon be is a fulfilment of my deepest self-image. Are you familiar with Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphic resonance? That there is an energetic space that our bodies fill? Without claiming this as ‘fact’, I have an intuitive empathy with this, and a strong feeling that this is how I shall feel – a better, truer fit with my energetic self. Will that innate sense of body, experienced in meditation, come finally to rest in me? Over coming weeks I shall get to know a new reality, but already I know it will be right.

I was right, and now, one year to the day I am in an unexpected place. The surgery was as perfect as could be, my healing was quick and unproblematic, the high heat of summer turned to autumn and I finally let go a number of final strands of my past. These were mental ones; ones that helped me in decluttering my flat this year. They were cutting loose my grief, even cutting free my acceptance of loneliness. I started going out to do things that would reattach me to a progressive world; I started to look for the future me.

And it was in a ‘Future You’ workshop series that I quite unexpectedly met my partner. Of all the things that happened this last year, this is the one that has changed life the most. No-one has been so accepting of all my realities, and that in itself is tremendously grounding. To be loved, and to love, I find the most validating experiences anyone can have.

A number of trans women have commented (or advised) that the few years after surgery are ones of ongoing self-realisation. Certainly, they are unencumbered by other people’s decisions, clinical treatment, uncertainty about the next appointment and a constant sense of waiting, kicking your heels. And I think I must agree. Had I not wanted the treatment, then it would not have been a watershed, but once you are committed to seeing it through, it feels like nothing else matters. I no longer had the obsession this day last year, so the time since has been one of free self-development.

Speaking only for myself, I do not feel in a trans space any more. I know I still need to explain sometimes to people why I may seem a bit different, but I don’t feel ‘trans’ or queer in myself. I wouldn’t mind if I did, but I just don’t. The body I enjoy now looks OK, it feels OK, and better than that, sharing it with my partner has never been other than completely natural and complete. Even writing my blog on trans matters can feel like an old story. I write still, to encourage, and to observe even this.

If this is your journey, and you are still travelling, it may seem long; just trust that you will get there, and that it’s good. If you know someone who is trans, and going through the hormone and /or surgery route, try to celebrate with them that this is the most authenticating experience they will ever have. If you are trans but not inclined to have every or any clinical intervention, then be happy and fulfilled. It’s just that I did need it, and it for me it’s the best thing I could ever have done.

Going quietly

  • Posted on June 2, 2015 at 8:19 pm

I missed three weeks writing this blog. Just being in other places, or too busy with life really. And not having sufficient reason to write something meaningful. In the meantime I’ve been nursing a sprained ankle back to strength, clearing out a lot of clutter and being more creative about space with and for my partner. I’m liking the whole idea of restarting shared life and not being the only one to make decisions about home-making. In fact I’m liking it so much, that all that happened last year is seeming like a very long time ago indeed.

Doing this as a grown adult rather than a twenties person is quite different. We know much more what to do, and why. We can make decisions, even think slightly radical thoughts about use of space and things owned too long. We can do things we’ve done before, and things we haven’t tried yet. It’s up to us. I like this freedom, to disagree, consider, agree, act. Freedom; a few years ago I was looking for freedom to be myself by changing, and at the time a lot of what I ended up being freed from felt a lot like other people’s decisions.

Freedom is a funny old thing, that we all want, and then find one person’s freedom restricts another’s. We then get tangled in words like ‘compromise’ and ‘expectations’. Our recent UK elections gave us a sense of pride in political freedom, to vote for whoever we liked. It’s a free country. Except that two-thirds of us who are entitled to vote did not get a representative government at all. I still regularly see social media posts from people who don’t feel free to be themselves, or, if they want to express themselves, realise that being free in one way means being rejected in another, bringing instead, restrictions.

I’m free now from a whole load of things I carried all my life. I’m even free of the system that enabled me to become finally free. And yet my obligations include a job too far from home, not exactly doing what I love, and not as rewarding as I’d like. I want to be free to learn something new and use it to benefit other people, not just earn money. In this respect I am not free. Earning is an obligation that cannot be paused. Hey ho. The answer, again, is for me to work out for myself, to do what matters most to me. I think I am in another kind of transition phase, from disruption back into gradual change, and getting used to walking instead of running obstacle courses. I’m walking, quietly.

It might seem I am walking away from some things. Where am I on Facebook, or Twitter? Very quiet. Meeting less frequently with other trans* people, and contributing less to online conversations, or even trans*-related blogging. I am even thinking about letting this blog drift off into poetry, and writing about writing instead. Why not? In some ways I really am going quietly, slipping back into a steady life, where I am happily loving and living and making a new social life. I don’t need to say anything much any more; my learning is different. I was invited last week to read my poetry at a local literary gathering in Brighton, and chose a set that had really nothing much to do with my recent transition. The theme was ‘place and permission’, reflecting on various things, from clearing a deceased relative’s house to observing life as a flat-dweller, to places with memories that stay with you, where you can’t really ever go again.

Did I go quietly, when I left my comfortable existence? No; not really. I was angry and noisy and preserving my dignity all at the same time. But I have gained a sense of belonging, to places and to people, that are some new, some just changed. This is still happening, so the poetry evening was followed the next day by a trip with a band I play with, for an extended weekend of outdoor concerts in Kent. It’s something I’ve often done, but this time I was going with my partner, for who it was a new and unknown experience. It was lovely, really lovely (apart from the weather not being as warm and quiet as it might). And of course we were a couple. Just quietly there with people I’ve known for ten years, but as the only trans* person in the band and now as the only lesbian couple too. It’s very reassuring to be accepted with question or explanation.

Apart from the ff parts, and sitting right in front of the timpani, it all went quietly.

The final settling

  • Posted on June 2, 2015 at 8:02 pm

I

This is the final settling
of dust, like the hour after snow –
silence unmarked by footfall,
respect before action.

The place of greeting now
just a door, in fallen leaves –
a winter of junk mail and news
unforaged: a single red-bill berry.

The hallway familiar in every detail –
except an assertive absence. And an
unfamiliar permission to touch
to tidy, to trammel, to trespass

into drawers and cupboards and
under-beds, unseen and thick
with dust and long-dead dramas
and dreams – and the bags. The carrier bags …

II

A life left in untidy fragments
furred over with a feeling of
do not touch, I have not been
touched for so long, so long.

In this tangible stillness,
the fine particles of his wearing,
on and in and out and settled – is an
unsettling presence lingering on.

And all those personal things –
glasses, teeth, hearing aids and combs,
their once-warm readiness to wear and use
now greasy, stale, waxy – hard to touch.

Beneath the dust is dust, and –
as if they’d run away to hide
in every rummage place, counting –
over two hundred obscure cameras.

III

Taps. First clean the taps. The sink.
The loo. Fresh soap. A towel. Bring
cleanness into this with Marigolds –
and retreat to a cafe for lunch.

The dirt is easy, the kitchen
unasked for and unasked about –
all thought of rescues for a
useful knife or tin, discarded

with biscuits, butter and green
things unspeakably prodded
into bags, beginnings of this final
settling of unanswerable neglect.

Something new intrudes this space,
room to move, space for sacks
black and bloating with the
obvious discards of a house.

IV

A drawer drags out like an open mouth
waiting for a dentist’s probe, forgiving
the intrusion for the sake of a fix, cavities
and old fillings of rolled-up socks.

A door discloses dreary clothes
that hang alike from left to right
shaking themselves out on shoes
foot-moulded and hard with time.

Bits and boxes, fallen hangers,
things best cleared long ago but
forgotten and left as too much trouble
in the surrender of age and energy.

In places, dust is alleviated by a hope –
an expectation, a desire for secrets –
some final revelation of a private life
betrayed by the carelessness of dying.

But the grey decay sinks too deep and
nothing, a solid total nothing, signs
and underlines every cranny as seen,
lacking even interpretation of surprise.

V

The second day, the third – tea bags
and biscuits in an oasis, black sacks
piled outside, windows such as can be
opened for air, doors long stuck still stubborn.

Decisions tumble out now, freed from
pretence of any finds among worthless
souvenirs and foreign coins, useful gadgets,
buttons, needles, cards in backs of drawers.

The only care is with the collected cameras.
What to do with so many unknowns, their
recognition evaporating, thinner than the dust,
as we rack them, pack them, crate them home.

And all those carrier bags – disintegrating embraces of
letters, statements, documents, curled photos,
the latent lists of life and leftovers, unsorted
and waiting for the hours of unfolding.

Rebagged and removed they will
trace and track the strands still reaching
out and away from this house into
a world that carries on – and needs to know.

 

2011 © Andie Davidson