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Why I liken myself to a plant

I’m a very skinny person, I barely have any natural body fat, even after being on a starter dosage of estrogen for over a year now. I have a very active metabolism, my body can process amounts of food that leave me bewildered sometimes. I find myself seeking out energy dense foods, especially after some manual labor or a long walk. My body is a machine that turns nutrients into dense bones and low body fat. I am likely the kind of person that an “archaeologist would call male” as asserted by those who reject my queerness. This was a difficult thing to recon with as I began to finally consider if queerness was a way that works for me. And the trans community on social media made it quite difficult for me to honestly find myself in all of it. Where do I belong? What do I look like?

The winters in my hometown are cold

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I can feel the cold right now, seeping into my fingers as I type. We have a very drafty old house, I’ve been told that it was originally built in the 1700’s, around the time that my town was established. I remember vividly, the experience of playing minecraft on my mother’s emachines computer running windows 7 in the living room. After 1-3 hours of play during the summer break, my feet would get so cold that my toes would start to curl in on themselves, my body wicks heat like an actual heat sink. The densest mass is my internal organs, which radiate heat through my blood, and by the time it reaches my fingers on a cold, sub-20F day like today; there is no warmth left, and I get colder. I feel my muscles turn to taffy. I feel my back get tense in reaction to a strong gust of cold wind. The sensory experience of being cold in this body has shaped my perception of winter.

And yet, I’ve always loved winter for what it represents. The undeniable beauty of the snow. Where there is pain, there will also be beauty. Humanity, especially Americans have a bit of a problem with perceiving extremes. We want to see change in our lifetimes, we want to experience being human without our lives being tainted by climate change, authoritarian governments and institutions, we want the children of the future to experience a world without hate, we want to not be cold when it is cold out. But succumbing to despair makes extremism and perfection appealing. We wish to fight for our “side” of things, the grass always seems greener where we are not. But it is the fence that creates the sides entirely. We need to stop asking the question of “which side has the greener grass?” and start asking “why is there a fence at all?”

What do you feel like?

Quite often I hear transfems on social media say something like: “If you feel like a woman, then you are one.” And then in other posts they proceed to paint what “feeling like a woman” feels like. This framework; in my personal opinion is too rigid, not allowing for adaptability and growth, born out of the age of social media, where thinking things through is often discouraged. Either through group tribalism, or through the nature of social media itself. As Marshall McLuhan put it; “The medium is the message.” This cycle of a likely addiction to social media, mixed with assertions about how to think, should leave us with serious pause. Orson Well’s Big Brother is here, and he is in your pocket, right now!! Millions of people talking, and nobody listening; these platforms create ideologies that thrive, not on careful, contemplative logic, reason, and heart, but rather by creating an addiction in it’s victims and asserting the most painful and extreme version of one’s reality back to them. A mirror that hates you. This realization of the state of things left me wanting more, I wanted to learn more about what it means to be queer, who came before me, what they said, how they felt. Although one thing did come from this; I knew that I did not feel like anything at all.

Now, of course, it’s worth pointing out that the extremes these transfems are responding to is also woefully unhelpful. The violence committed against queer people is very real and clearly not okay, but responding with violence, hate, anger, and insults would never contribute to a peaceful world. I’ve noticed this tendency to hide my queerness and only show it to the right people because of this turbulent, chaotic societal conflict. Mayhaps there is some wisdom there, I can imagine that ICE agents in my neighborhood may have me responding differently. But, might I suggest the path that I’ve found away from this violence?

What do I feel like?

This is the first earring I've ever owned. One of them, actually, the copy broke years ago. It's just a simple print onto some thin plastic, with a small bit of putty of some kind to fasten it to the hook. It was quite expensive for such a low quality, cheap earring. I’ve bought earrings made of real clay and metal for the same price or cheaper. But I saw leaves and I bought them without thinking. In the summer of 2020, about half a year into covid lockdown; I got my ears pieced. I still remember that feeling of excitement and euphoria that was walking around in the lawn, wearing these earrings for the first time. I now understand that this was simply a door opening, and the joy of finding inner peace, and self love on the other side. I coulda stopped here, but as my curiosity seemingly has no boundaries, I kept searching. This surely wasn’t everything. It made me feel happy to know that I’d created options for myself. But, how does one turn “options” into a life that one enjoys?

“I” “am” “Nobinary”

These three words are loaded with context and cultural disagreement. I’ve had friends tell me “That’s not what nonbinary means, it means in between a man and a woman!” As if the definition isn't in the name; Non…Binary? Not Binary? ”What else could it possibly mean?”

Unfortunately, coming out to people with the phrase has never failed to be an awkward & absurd process. The disparity between the self and the other and my attempts to bridge that gap left me to wonder if there was an easier way that didn’t leave people distant and confused. I tried my best to help people along, but I found that many people simply refuse to think about it. The medium is the message, after all. Years submerged in a context of boys and girls & men and women leave many people in a mindstate that these archetypes are tangible objects. I’ve found that even many trans people seem to think this way. In that way, I seem to be quite alone in my perspective. The amount of online transfems that have gendered me as a woman, a girl, or a lady is staggering. The gays also do not check the pronouns in the bio, it’s not just you. This led me to create perhaps what an artist would call an “avant garde” poem titled: 'NOT A GIRL' It’s just a string of text repeating the phrase in all caps 158 times. But I wanted to capture how it feels to be surrounded by people who don’t understand you.

Now, obviously, within the context of extremism in our modern digital performance, it can be quite tempting to simplify the idea of nonbinary. “You’re transfem, and you’re not a man, so I have to treat you like a woman.” and I have in fact run towards woman-hood because it was the clearest and fastest road away from masculinity. But after a while of running away from where you don't wanna be, you begin to ask yourself “where do I want to go?” And while I don’t shy away from femininity, I also no longer shy away from masculinity. Not because I “am” both, or either or neither of them, but because learning to embody everything around me -- above and below -- is pragmatic.

The strength of my body in undeniably helpful, my broad shoulders being born of an agrarian family, have suited me well in my context. But my transness, and steps towards femininity have not been unpleasant, I also find the earrings and hair as something I aesthetically enjoy. The effects of the estrogen replacing my testosterone has changed the softness of my skin, my breasts are small, and I’m still on a starter dosage, but I still love these elements for what they represent. I love that I have ever so slightly morphed into something new, something more complex, something unique. Just as the simple ingredients of the periodic table interact to form new, more complex molecules and compounds, I have taken the elements of gender and made a more interesting someone. A “me” who is more “Lewa.”

And I think that this rejection of complexity is what many, or most of the people who would reject my gender think and feel. Perhaps they dislike the idea that their lives become more complicated, that they have to alter their mode of thinking to become inclusive, to allow someone new into their life. And I think the idea of T4T (an exclusively trans relationship) is a rejection of this world view, but in an extreme direction that does away with cis people nearly altogether. I think that to reject simplicity is to reject the environment that created transness. The truth is that we need eachother. If men and women didn’t exist, then I wouldn’t be trans, because I would not have transitioned from one thing to another. I’ll refer you to some imagery of two sticks leaning against one another that Alan Watts often condures;

^[1]“you lean two sticks against each other and they stand up, because they support each other. Take one away and the other falls. They interdepend.”

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The world is a party, lets make it a good one

My cold fingers, my disillusionment with the self, the existential question of what to do with myself afterwards. It can be easy to succumb to despair when it feels like you’re fighting the current, and you will find violence if you fight the flow of things. It is best, in my opinion; to flow with the forces that surround you. Of course we can’t stick thoughts in other people’s heads easily, like seeds in a garden. Not without the gardener’s consent, not without being kind, not without learning to speak their language, not without love in our open hearts. A safe place where one has the time to consider meaning somberly, and without fear of their survival is a good place to live. I wouldn’t wish to take that away from anyone.

There maybe is no way that I'd be gendered as a woman by 9/10 randoms on the street, but the more I thought about it, the less like a woman I wanted to be. I wanted to be free from the framework of gender entirely. And my answer has been to authentically embody everything; To be Wholistic, to find inner balance. It's the simple and complex, the open-hearted and reserved, it's yin and fucking yang, baby!!! Masculinity and femininity reflect eachother, so too do cis people and nonbinary people. As above, so below. Appealing to extremes only serves to rip us apart, rather than find common ground. Have a funky gender, be an angel, or a forest person, or a wizard or a dog, or a cat, or just… a guy! Fuckin' whatever, just remember to have fun! If you’re not enjoying your life, then something has to change!

Queers use the term "Gender Expression", because everything is expression. Life is a dance and the world is a party and I invited myself... and my nonsensical plant fairy gender, because nonsense is the most sane reaction to being alive.

~ Lewa 💚

References

I've been left here thinking
about the next time I'll see you

and I’ve been left here waiting
for that moment to arrive

so until that moment
I’ll be wishing you could kiss me

I am beyond the imaginations of most
but in the possibility of the fabric is I

Many deny me, many hate me,
but none can destroy me.

I am the universe unfolding into infinity
and I am the beginning and the end of it all

I defy explanation and I am hated for it
I provoke the cowardly to combat

I sow seeds of interest and I am loved
I encourage the curious to explore

The space I enter is invaded
The space I carve out is stolen
The words I speak are treason

But I am whole,
and the forces against me, fractured
they cannot see me for what I am
that is why I am unapparent.

The wolf and the Fae

Passage 1: Flesh and Desire

Flesh and desire is all that is. I desire flesh, and I feed my desires. The forest bends to my will, those who do not fear me become my sustenance. In this place, I am king. I own this forest, and it must obey me, lest I devour them all. The forest is here to feed me, the inner and external are harmonious. I desire flesh, and so I find it, and then I eat it. I have cultivated this forest so that the sweet flesh of a young animal is a plentiful snack, and the exhilarating chase of a hunt is a few steps away.

I smell flesh, and I am hungry, I follow the scent. It leads to a creek and stops at the edge. I look left, I look right, nothing -- I begin crossing the water. As I approach the other side, I get a whiff of the sweet red flesh of a young creature, and my desire makes the time between now and the creek’s edge meaningless. The scent overtakes me once again, my appetite is ravenous.

I get lost in the task of sniffing the ground, honing the direction, the scent gets gradually stronger as I run. I run, I leap, I scramble. Nothing can stop me from getting the meat I desire, nothing could ruin my appetite, this world is mine!

A clearing opens up in front of me, I sneak along the edges, hungry for the sight line that gives me power over the unsuspecting creature inside it’s borders. The brush obscuring me in the fog of the hunt. I close in on a shadowy edge of the clearing, the scent is intoxicating. I’m so close that I can practically taste that sweet sweet flesh. The snap of a twig, the heads of two deer arise, I lunge towards my meal. The deer scatter and I manage to scratch a hind leg. My heart is pumping, I feel my feet moving, but they carry me without effort. This is my purpose, I hunger, I chase, I devour. The doe takes a wrong turn down a gulch and her flesh is as good as mine. I enjoy the meat the most when it is warm, while the blood is still moving, with the nerves still twitching. I am the devourer, I devour or I die.

After feasting, The wolf cleans his mouth in some wet moss and begins the trot back to his cave in a drunken stupor. The sound of the birds chirping is shattered by a sound louder than anything he’s ever heard and he falls limp to ground.

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Passage 2: First Sight

The wolf wakes up to the sound of rustling leaves and scraping dirt. He opens his eyes and finds that he is looking at the forest ceiling. The next thing he noticed is the pain. The wolf attempts to turn his head to see who’s dragging him and can’t quite manage it. But, he sees the tip of a gun pointing up towards that beautiful mural of leaves, branches and sky. I feel as though I am paralyzed. I am distraught, I wish to tear his guts out, I wish to devour his innards while he drifts away, I-

“Are you aware that I can hear you, wolfie?” The wolf, overcome by embarrassment, becomes paralyzed in more ways than one. The stranger fills the awkward silence; “I heard the gunshot and came running as fast as I could. I managed to steal his gun and stop him before he carted you off to become a pelt.” The rhythmic dragging stops, the sound of gulping water follows. The wolf thinks to himself: Who does she think she is? Dragging me like this? I need to find that hunter so I can eviscerate him, drag him by his inner-

”Would you like a sip? I bet you’re pretty thirsty after all that deer-chasing. I followed your tracks for quite a distance! You wolves are remarkable runners…” A face drifts into the wolf’s view, a fae. This leaves the wolf taken aback, and he is thirsty but he neglects to open his mouth to negotiate for it. “Suit yourself, boop!” The fae boops his snoot, pops the cap back on her bottle, and exits his view.

The dragging recommences and likewise the wolf recommences his ruminations: This is humiliating, this creature should fear me, not help me. The Wolf realized that she was right though, he was thirsty, and he was very vulnerable. He hated being vulnerable. I need to get away from this, I should make a run for i- The elephant leaf the wolf is being dragged on hits a rock and he lets out a loud whimper. "Oh, it’s more serious than I thought! Hold on, let me get out my medicine bag…” ”NO!” “Oh my, looks like we have a talker! So are you gonna tell me where it hurts?” ”DON’T TOUCH ME! I don’t want your fae magic!” Snarling and the gnashing of teeth ensues. “Oh, gimmie a break!” The fae shouts, “You think the guy that shot you would be helping you, right now?” “A death in combat is an honorable one. It sure beats getting dragged halfway across the forest, this is cruel!” In exasperation, the fae shrugs her shoulders and says “Fine! you want me to leave you here? So be it! I’ll just leave you right here, to bleed out on the ground and not heal you back to health, so you will never get revenge on the guy who sh-” OKAY FINE! I’ll let you help me, but only until I can walk. Then no more. The fae grins, making sure to do so with her face turned away. ”Does that mean you’ll let me treat your leg?” The wolf nods and the fae excitedly pulls out faer healing bag and applies a poultice made from moon water and herbs. She explains all of it to the wolf, who just heard 27 new words and it is unlikely he understood most of it . The wolf’s attention drifts back into faer monologue and manages to catch a bit of the end of it; “…and the yarrow is actually a disinfectant, and also it smells like mildew and honey, one of my favorite herbs…” The fae finishes wrapping up the wolf’s leg in a splint, which prompts him to realize that he surprisingly felt no pain the whole time. It was as if the only sensation he felt was the subtle gliding of silk across his fur. ”So, how does it feel?” The fae politely asks with a smile. ”It beats walking.” ”ooouuh a moody, lone wolf! How dark and mysterious and charming an-” ”OKAY, I get it! You’ve made your point, sorry… I’m just really angry about that hunter. Thank you for healing my leg.” "Thanks you for appreciating my healing. I’m sorry for teasing you. C’mon, we’ve only got a mile or so left!” The fae packs up her bag and once again starts the hauling process.

The wolf begins to doze off on whatever magical drugs she gave him. He then realizes that he doesn’t know faer name. ”What is your name? You fae do that, right?” ”I go by many names, master wolf, but for now, you can call me Raia.” ”Thank, you for healing my leg, Raia.” The wolf drifts away while listening to the slow and steady sounds of rustling leaves.

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Chapter 3: Monster in the woods

Daisy zipped through the forest, she’s on a mission from the healing mother. ”Oh, what color was it?” She pulls out her communication pearl that Raia gave her and calls it in. ”Hey, what was the flower I’m looking for again?” Raia’s voice echos through the tiny ball; “Hello Daisy, Yarrow’s got little white flowers bunched together onto long stalks with feathery, dark green leaves. The more mature plants often stand tall and strong in meadows for most of the season.” Daisy tears past a meadow at full speed and makes a wide turn and slows down when she enters the clearing. She can smell dried blood in the grass, she happens upon a buck and a baby deer nesting.

“Oh, how sad, a baby deer without a mother… My heart aches… did you get that Raia?” ”Yes I did, I’ll come by in a bit, I’m dealing with a hulking angry furball at the moment.” A pause ”Why don’t you collect the yarrow and stay with the fawn for me?” Daisy, who was quite excited to zip back so she could get back to her sewing, lets out a groan. Raia consoles her; ”I won’t be long, I’m just dropping him off now.” The glowing of the orb didn’t cease and Daisy rolled her eyes and said: “What else?” The pearl flickers and emanates Raia’s voice once more: “I know I’m asking a lot of you, but would you please try to remember next time? The communication pearls are not easy to source and have limited uses, you know. I’ll cyah in a few.”

Daisy let out another sigh when the pearl went dark and she slowly lowered the rpm of her wings til she softly landed on a pillow of high-up yarrow flower. She watched the baby deer, without a doe to care for her, she might starve out here; what kind of monster would do something so cruel? Daisy sat there feeling pain for the orphaned fawn and fell asleep in the sweet smell of her yarrow flower bed.

Humanity builds systems that when revealed to be imperfect are thus considered unsatisfactory. These tools can be anything. Vehicles, garden tools, languages, clothing, software, websites, oxytocin, stories, community centers, social constructs, religions, governments. These are all conduits by which humanity manifests it’s will. Skilled and diverse tool making is a consistent feature of the most influential dynasties.

It can be argued that the correct choice of tool could be the difference between life and death. Perhaps a doctor prescribes you the wrong medication and you get sick, or maybe a military officer mistakes some radio jargon and the party gets lost. Being familiar with your tools is crucial to a safe and prosperous world. A nation, a religion, a culture that does not understand its tools is ultimately doomed. Tools are conduits of power, it is only once we learn how to use our tools do we truly begin to channel that power. That is to say a powerful individual is one with a diverse, specialized and creative toolbox.

This framework of everything as a tool allows us to better identify what tools are available to us, we can see accurately what is truly valuable. If everything as a tool is the framework by which to enact change onto the world, then a toolbox is a tool by which to accrue wealth. The more tools you have at your disposal, the more stable your life can become, and then the process works in a cycle that allows you to build wealth. Horses (a youtube channel) said this in his striking documentary on Ghengis Khan: ”The Khan’s tendency to assimilate was a major source of his success. He didn’t really develop new weapons at all. Instead, Genghis Khan took from a diverse group of people. When he encountered a strategy or tool which could serve his army, the Khan incorporated it into his forces.”

The Khan recognized that there is no end to knowledge. You can forever learn and collect and prosper. This is how dynasties are built, this is what wealth truly is.

References

GENGHIS KHAN The Peasant Who Conquered the World

Take me into forever

I have split the atom of my mind’s eye,
the pieces lay before me

looking back on it always makes it seem easier than it was,
and looking forward always seems harder than it is

as I came to understand the components,
I discarded the pieces I’d prefer not to carry

words can’t describe the tonal peace I feel in my soul,
I now have direction, clarity, focus.

I stopped running away from the wolf chasing me, hiding from me in my shadow.
he is now my sled dog, taking me into forever.

There is no sense of being afraid of your shadow,
because your shadow is you,
and knowing oneself, is the door to everything.

~ Lewa 💚

What is Addiction?

Addiction is the inability to cease undesirable behavior.

It's a strange phenomenon in homo sapiens. In fact, besides cases when humans mess with incentive structure; it seems animals actually are so good at not getting addicted to things that it makes us look bad. Modern human life is very different from our primitive origins. Of course that doesn't mean that modern monkeys don't share similarities to us, some species have been recorded sharing overripe fruit. But I couldn’t find any evidence of addiction, that seems to be a human invention. But, why is this? Well, it probably has something to do with the aforementioned incentive structures.

So let's turn our attention to human society. Our modern world is full of those strange, enticing objects of desire. Porn, Junk food, high sugar foods. Online games and social media platforms seem to be adopting ever-increasingly manipulative design practices to hold your engagement, and gambling is becoming more unregulated than ever before. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allowing users to bet on literally anything — (yikes!)

So we've identified our problem, where to go from here? Well, living like the unabomber is a romantic aesthetic; but it’s hardly practical. Enter tiktoker and youtuber Caolité McClean: He’s changed his whole life around after some experiences that shook him. Now he makes motivational videos and encourages people to go outside and enjoy nature. In a youtube video, he describes this change that he cultivated within himself. He repeats the idea that addictions are ultimately just habits. He even goes on to say: “I’m addicted to the gym, I go to the gym a couple hours every day and if that was taken away from me it’d have a really bad effect on my life…I’m totally addicted to that, I’m addicted to going on adventures, I’m addicted to being outside, I’m addicted to all of these things. Addiction is just a thing that’s a part of your life.”

Habits are just repeated activities, and as it turns out; some activities are harder to stop doing than others. It seems as though a path out of addiction is to create rituals that serve our purposes.

References

Wild chimpanzees share fermented fruits
what they don't talk about when you change your life

I heard that you should take your pet projects out back behind the shed and put them out of their misery, and I’ve found that there’s a lot of truth in that. Come Out was a big stepping stone for me, and I am quite fond of it for that reason. It was the kick I needed to actualize not only myself, but my skills as a creative. The more I learned the more I realized that the way I was doing things was counterproductive. A classic newbie creative’s mistake of trying to run before one can walk, throw it on the pile!

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I learned so much in pursuit of finishing Come Out only to realize that I could say everything I was saying more succinctly. But of course, the pursuit of knowledge never ends. I keep learning and keep growing, and that means that I gotta get into the habit of actually finishing projects. I’m still quite bad at that, but the experiments have been paying off. The poems, the photo dumps. I’m obsessed with an app called open camera. You can find it on F-Droid on android devices. No AI upscaling, just the tools for filtering the raw data on a digital sensor. It’s really quite remarkable, and open source software has come a long way in recent years.

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Those dreams have been coming back, a creative mind must be cared for. There’s this brilliant book called Liber Indigo by Justin Kirkwood. It’s about how the metaphors we live by affect the ways we think. He uses this knowledge to make an argument for a more useful way to design computers. It’s a brilliant read, very short, only 145 pages including the index, it changed my fucking life. But Kirkwood’s research goes much further than computers or UI design. It’s everything, we’re all like that, submerging ourselves in oceans of metaphor that flatten the underlying complexity of the world, while simultaneously giving us tools for change. We must actively and consciously choose metaphors that are pragmatic, that serve us, and not those who wish to oppress us. Get out there and learn something, you may be surprised how much you needed it.

That’s it for now, I love you, whoever you are, take care, and wash your fuckin’ dishes!!!

~ Lewa 💚

Hello everyone. Most apologies in the delay for uploading this, I’m still recovering from the disorientation sickness once again. Believe it or not, being the victim of a malignant narcissist is emotionally debilitating :,)

Turns out alla that “I’m gonna kick you out and you have to leave on november 31st!!” (which isn’t a real day by the way) was actually just some bullshit. I’ve since gained a better understanding of how narcissists actually work. They create problems for you to solve, and my intentional revocation of attention or reactions was what starved my abuser’s black hole hungry for drama.

Turns out that I was actually too gung-ho with the whole thing and I just needed to give her a drip. There’s ways of dealing with narcissists, many call it “grey rock.” I cannot recommend the youtube channel Theramin Trees enough for helping me understand dogmatic ideologies, such as narcissism. He even helped me unpack how narcissistic traits can persist in victims and I was able to unlearn some of my own narcissistic behavior. There’s a long road of healing ahead, but I now have strategies to keep the monster at bay while focusing on myself. I think that that’s quite cash money of me, if I do say so!

I must say that it’s pretty damn frustrating that my abuser literally threatened to throw me away if I didn’t serve her uses though. As if that’s what being a parent is about. But, that’s not the world a narcissist lives in, I was starving her of her fuel source. She wants conflict, she wants to poke me and bother me, and it’s not about not giving it to her, it’s about giving her something off script, every time. Socialization is a creative process. And when you step out of that script, you can say whatever you want, however you want, and as long as you confuse the narcissist, then you’re probably doing good enough.

SO, TDLR; brass tax is that I am safe til I can escape on my own terms. Thanks so much to everyone for the support, and to those who actually donated money, but please, don’t feel like you have to anymore! Although, setting up a kofi for my writing was something that I wanted to do for a while anyways, so it’s gonna stay! I’m still learning about how to beautify my website, AND how to write. In fact, a lot of progress is happening in that direction, which is most exciting! But in the mean time, I’m just gonna pursue a career in cooking, go on walks in the cold New York winter, and focus on taking care of myself.

With love for everyone reading and the multitude of Lewas who woke up every day and wrote this, adios

~ Lewa 💚