Ice

My professional life has always been a mess, and the older I get, the hardest I have to look to catch the most elusive glimpse of a way out. Or in.

I had the typical education of a firstborn-with-a-little-sister in macho freak South America. I was raised to have a militar career. When puberty came and my voice took a bit longer to crack, my parents very fortunately gave up on the obsession, because back in the daze the military was associated with heterosexuality. Well, come to think of it, it still is. But anyway, they started investing like there was no other possibility in making me a small businessman, because that's what my father was and we all know how the story goes.

My old people were kinda low key and VERY limited. Well, they still are, but 28 years knowing me have forced them to accept other possibilities in a universe like this. I sincerely trust that they had good intentions (in part because I fear going way too bitter this late in my emotional development), but how on Earth couldn't they see I needed drawing, guitar or dance lessons (something my sister had from the moment she could walk without leaning on walls) more than prescribed psychodrugs, or keeping my hair short or totally off-the-wall shoehorning, or multi-abuse? Back then, it just seemed right to think the fault of being misunderstood was mine.

Anyway, time passed, and because my mother had a college degree, she felt indebted with affording me one, too. I wanted Psychology. I wanted to investigate this fascinating world of honest emotions and shared feelings, something that was denied to me because I was born in the wrong place, with the wrong people. And wrong time, too, because I don't think I'll never fit this world before it's about 2050 common era. By then, maybe. So, mom wanted something glamourous, a career that implied a grey suit and a cold-ass stare, so she could look like a celebrity's mom to that miserable neighbourhood I grew up in. To the very best of my judgement back then, the only career that sounded like professional training, creativity honing and glitter was Journalism. Well, at least I'd be able to earn a living writing, right?

Wrong. Like every decision I took guided by my mom's urgings. Frankly, if I had her money and her sense of sovereignity when I was 13, I'd probably have grown up to be a winner today.

Writing is about 5% of what Journalism is these days, and most of Journalism students of my generation never got to work with it because of the scarcity of jobs in the field, the poor academic credentials and the huge mob of competitors in the market. Even those who did, are depressed slaves today. I had to let go of all connections I had with them in order to not be dragged down to alcoholism and suicide. So, I wound up with a useless degree in something that's useless for getting a stable job, a less-than-human identity, charges and demands from family and neighbourhood, and a violent depression. But I managed to fail in the suicide suicide part, fortunately.

I took a summer course in my first Summer after graduation on Art Therapy, and the facilitator, a college Psychology professor said: "the psychologist's nature is to move on to Art". That moment, at least two thousand bells rang in my head, and I realised I'd been on the wrong path from the moment I decided to let my mother influence on my academic career.

But because I avoided alcoholism, I became a self-help junkie. I managed to do fine in this new era, really. The finest I've ever done. Naïvety and irrationality are the best fuel I have used to move my machine to date: I broke free from parental oppression, moved to another state, landed a decent career as a translator and bilingual writer, admited I wanted to be a musician and started pursuing a training against all odds (and all evens, too, for that matter), then moved abroad and even got married. Accomplishments gays of my generation never ever dream of.

But the fairytale has led me to a new hard beginning. I live now in a xenophobic land that thinks my country is Disneyland with semi-naked women and pseudo-African rythmns. Unless I agree to be the next football sensation or this week's mulata, I probably ain't good for much. And I'd been living happily on language before the prince became a frog.

A few problems arose. First, I can rely on two languages to work with as a professional: English and Portuguese. Turns out the locals prefer what they all seem to call "native speaker" by consensus when it comes to choosing a translator, a teacher or a writer, even though that notion is scandalous nonsense, and most of the times it leads them to pick the worst candidate possible. No wonder hardly anybody can speak a foreign language here. And technically, I'm not a "native speaker" (whatever that means, since no-fucking-body is born speaking a language, except maybe Taliesin reborn, in that old Celtic legend I loved telling when I was a storyteller), neither of English, nor of Portuguese, because the news in town is that in Brazil we don't speak Portuguese, but "Brasileño", whatever the fuck these sicktards mean with that. So, now that I had landed a career and had started building a nice resume, I'm back to ground zero with five years more counting against me in a youth-worshipping culture obsessed with perfection and no idea whatsoever of what a foreign language actually is. And no degree to stand above questionings (Spain's national sport), either.

I decided then I'd just temporarily move to "informal economy", as we call it in Brazil. I hanged signs advertising private English and Portuguese lessons in public libraries. In all libraries I posted them, lack-mentality, EFL-teaching jerks ripped off my ads and posted their own. I used to rip theirs off, too. But tonight it made me just too depressed that, after all I have been through, I'm now reduced to this.

Frogs are said to unfreeze when the Winter's over and to come back to life, brand new. I just want to hope there's still an irrational all-winning idiot somewhere deep inside me, just waiting to unfreeze and start leaping and frolicking again when Winter's over.

Faster, please

I'm legally married and I cannot be kicked from Spain by policemen ambushing South-american ppl in the Metro exit anymore. I'm safe. And I've got a date for my Spanish ID# to come, so I can work, travel, study and own stuff. In January, 2009. But truth is that it makes me sick I can't visit my people in Brazil sooner than sometime next year, maybe in Spring.

It's hard. The whole thing's been pretty hard to achieve this, but it's even harder to realise it's not over yet.

Don't get me wrong. I'm loving being here, I'm loving getting my basic needs met without weariness for once in my life, but as of right now I need a PnT in Trianon, a public ritual with a beautiful spiral dance and a power cone in the end, a pressed hot-dog with Cheddar and mashed potatoes and a poetry slam in Casa das Rosas.

Please.

By the way, the photos of the wedding are already online: picasaweb.google.com/Awen1980/Wedding# . Enjoy.

My Wedding Day

We got married yesterday. Whatever was said that day or before, and I know this because I was there, they didn't mean those mean words. Everybody was touched in a way. It was a beautiful occasion, an important day, and the celebration of enough strength, faith and power to overcome the usual difficulties of sharing a house with a person very different from you, moving to a very different country and practicing radical acceptance.

The day began early. A rather charming conversation between my mother and father-in-law had happened a few days before:

Father: One of these days, Jose will marry.
Mother: Yes.
Father: When it happens, don't make me aware of it.

So, my brother-in-law and his wife picked my mother-in-law up early that morning and drove to our place. From here, she helped me iron my gold shirt and Jose's brown one for the big day, and we went to the civil registry to meet the rest of Jose's friends. Jose and I said "I do", Curri and Ángel took photos and then had lunch in my favourite restaurant in Madrid, a vegetarian and pirate-inspired place very appropriately called "Isla del Tesoro". Really nice. Then we went to have a coffee in one bar, a drink in another and slowly one by one we came home while the group went bar-hopping. Nothing that was said would move me from my center and from the glory of that day. It was all earned with merit and a very rare sense of honour.

The photos will come soon, I hope. My own camera is broken, and Jose doesn't have one, so we just relied on friends. Let's hope and trust that this time the photos will come, and then I'll proudly share them.

It's merry to live in a country where gay people have civil rights, even though not many other things about it are as merry. Married life isn't new to me in many ways, since we had been living together for a year and four months. But even though we've been walking the same road as one ever since, from now on the roads we cross will see each of us both in a very different light. Which is what I sought.

And I love my husband.

Colour Matters

One of the main characteristics of immature judgement is black-and-white, good-versus-evil thinking, but it's not really something that should be punished, despised or shunned. It's a sprout of something important. It's the first sign of a willingness to understand, and certainly a connection.

Obviously black-and-white thinking is not restricted to youth or ignorance. At any stage in our lives, when we are caught amidst the flames of drama or led by those who are, we all tend to throw around harsh judgements and to miss important, invisible details that are also crucial for actual comprehension. Some actually do that even when they aren't, but that's not something we can avoid.

After this weekend's "meditation" retreat (which was little more than another typically Spanish, dog-crowded fiasco/nightmare), I decide to let go of limited visions and mean-spiritedness to embrace all colours, even those I cannot see. Since I want a richer life, I choose to embrace, not cut the world in half.

But I'll never again be fooled by Disneyland dreams this side of the Pyrenees, anyway.

Image: Kristin Miller's "Spiral Heart" quilt.

Stag Party

Tomorrow morning I'm off to the mountains with my gay men's meditation group for a short retreat until Sunday. I'm really thankful and definetely looking forward to this chance to chill down, disconnect from the drama, reconnect with the Source and revitalise before the wedding.

Qirin image from Ahyicodae.com

Equinox

Autumn blessings to all my friends and readers. May you grow in gratitude for all the love, joy and abundance around us on this beautiful day.

May dignity bless and shine on your releases, and may you find Deep Peace in all you are surrendering to the Ebbing Tides.

We are well on the Good Red Road.

Old Ghost

In less than ten days I'll be a married man, and, truth be told, there is a reason loneliness, isolation and forsakenness have been a recurring theme in my blog lately. This is an issue that's become prominent in my life all of a sudden, and I've been doing my best to avoid it. Silly me.

I have never been able to talk to any of my old people. My father, poor old man, is a plain loser in life. Spent many nights of his adult and elderly years and much of his physical health playing cards with Rotarians and Freemasons, but was never invited into their closed spaces and feast in the top of the social Pyramid. His only advice to me ever was, "nobody needs you, and you need these people who make you feel so miserable". In these exact words, albeit in Portuguese, repeated over and over again, even when it didn't apply. My mother has always had the maturity of Paris Hilton's chihuahua, and anything I let slip to her, she'd spread around the very toxic neighbourhood we used to live in, and in three days, my life was nightmare. Once, I was living on my own for a few months and I made the mistake of letting her know over the phone that I had got a cold. She immediately air-mailed to me a list of blood tests her gynecologist prescribed to me, and I had four bottles of blood drawn from me early in the morning, with nothing in my stomach and a heavy headache. Because I had a cold and was in perfect health, my body naturally raised the defenses. The following week, the news in Rio were that I had Leukemia. No wonder my social life has always been one nightmare after another, and lately, the ultimate challenge for me.

We all know how the story goes, and here is how the story went: I got engaged to a guy who's been trying to change me from day one I stepped into HIS country, HIS house, HIS social circle, HIS life, all to fit HIS tastes. And then he convinces me I'm too arrogant to admit I'm wrong. I've given up everything I could afford to give up already, and I'm fine with it, but I really couldn't get back to eating meat again, and now he's determined to make me feel miserable, really miserable, and of course guilty, too, everytime we go out and there's anything food ever mentioned.

His evolution has been very positive, very impressive and very welcome. I'm thankful that now he doesn't make a scene when I want to caress him during the day anymore. But I can't help feeling stifled sometimes, when I tell him, for instance, that I am hungry, and he with a flicker and a flash and a heavy whiff of ash suddenly thrusts, shrouded in the smoke he keeps making: "You see, if you were more flexible..." And then he talks about Morocco and some other muslim, homophobic shithole I don't have the money, the papers or the wits to visit anytime soon.

I swear I only went to the meeting with his gang tonight because I was too lonely here in the flat, and none of the new friends I've made here was available for a walk or something. And my webfriends weren't online to talk to me.

In moments like these, unresolved ghosts from the past resurface. And I'm exhausted of dealing with them all by myself by now. I know it was a stupid move to quit the gay therapy group since they came back from the Summer, but I need to cull the projects that currently cost money, and that was the next in the list of nice-with-a-price. But I need to address this issue. I need to fix myself and be able to actually have a social life outside the Internet.

Image: "Loneliness 7", by Karol Petres.

Flying Birds

The current spiritual bliss I'm experiencing with all the stuff I've been blogging about lately (and then some) apparently doesn't come without a price. I want to grieve a little bit here about the recent minor withering of the Lavender Society for Alternative Sexuality Heroes.

In January, I very naïvely started a beautiful project on one of these game-applications Facebook has. The game was basically a race for hero levels and new hero superpowers, and then using our abilities on each other. In the very beginning of the enormous, fast-growing community around the hero game that was multiplying by the hour, we became one of the pioneer groups, and by far the largest sexuality-related group on the game sub-culture.

Quickly, we got to feature over one thousand very active and very vocal members. Many of them I considered great friends. We became a very important part of each other's lives in the blink of an eye. Together, we managed to take the Lavender Society to Top Eight hero groups (within a universe of tens of thousands of groups) in no time, always faithful to a spirit of camaderie, fun and radical anarchism.

Then in July, after months and months dedicated full-time (about nine hours a day) to making the game environment a more interesting, healthier and richer experience, Facebook deleted my account overnight, and never replied to any of my (very, very polite, given the circumstances) emails, never giving me a reason for that. I was desolated, and decided I deserved some time off, to recover from the blow.

Slowly but still suddenly, a considerable number of our heroes started to jump ship. I understand desertions happen all the time, as they had certainly happened before, and I had no means and no intention to avoid them, but having people leave so incessantly felt a bit like betrayal.

In the heat of the debate, new members became very vocal in a way they initially didn't have the right to. But, true to my anarchist priciples, I gave them that right, so they used it to create an anti-Awen club, specializing in distorting my words and questioning an authority I never really exercised. And now, slowly, most high-level heroes of the Lavender Society are leaving.

If I still had my old Elvenking account, I could restore the Lavender Society to its former glory quick and easy. But because I feel very leery with Facebook these days, and because I know there is malicious propaganda going on under the table, I don't have the heart to get my hands dirty with more shit right now, while I'm harvesting many spiritual blessings. So I've decided to let it all go.

I have no idea how many friends I will have left from the Lavender Society in a few months from now. I know I did make a few good friends there that won't ditch me, or us as a group. But I know that you've got to let go of a bird, let it fly away and check if it will return to you in order to be sure you were meant to be together. Since most of these strayaways aren't probably coming back this time around, they've never been my friend anyway.

So, I move on with my training, my projects and my own life. I really need to compensate for the many months lost investing so irrationally in a Facebook game.

This probably teaches me an important lesson, though, given that it's happening in tandem with Tribe.net's recent major crisis. We are given gifts by pioneers and community leaders. They haven't let us down out of negligency, and it doesn't feel right to turn your back to someone who opened you their door. True bonds and societies, hero or human, are built with tolerance, high times, low times, time on, time off and even time-outs, but definetely not flying by from tree to tree. Time Manipulation and Teleportation at least taught me that.

You are all free to fly, and I am proud that for a many months I managed to create a beautiful community and prove once that gays, lesbians and bisexuals aren't a minority.

And one more thing: the Lavender Society is still standing.

Image: our logo, by Andy Nguyen.

Okay, really,

I love music, and I was actually very much meant for it.

Clarity

I do turn off the lights to sleep, but I sure thing hate the Dark when I'm in the pink. I know I'm not Miss Dharma yet, but I've been managing to stick to my New Year Resolution of helping my inner waters run clearer, still and, therefore, deep.

First, there's Dr. Overtone's aid. I've always guessed I was missing an important part of life due to my numbed ear and rough musicality, but now that I've been guided a bit further into the heart of the Sound and Silence Mysteries, I realise how many lives I have been missing. There is a common feature among zen masters, jedis, and soul musicians. When you let the Dual Lord (Sound and Silence) master you, you master yourself. And you float in nirvanic bliss more and more often.

The Light that began shining in that part of my head has been grounding, centering and connecting me to the Now-Here. That's the most empowering experience, really, and I don't think there's another way to live life more intensely. The hot-air balloon-head mode had been on for too long lately, and I'm glad Spirit found a very organic and rewarding way to help me realign with Life.

On Thursday, I had a talk with my vocal coach. I know that I shouldn't begin talkings with people lately, that I'm much better off just savouring the moment, the activities, the opportunities and the silent company, so I can hear the Truth more clearly. But I let it slip that I was proud of my headway over the past 11 months working with her.

From there the conversation spiralled down. Maybe it's just my defensiveness making me hallucinate in paranoia, but she did repeat that she doesn't see me singing other than as a hobby and for her, only. Naturally, she doesn't have to see me singing to a large audience, because I can do it myself and it's probably my own job anyway, but I've been letting that interefere with my practice at home.

I know I'm very tender with this subject, but I've invested so much in this and I haven't really got another solution for my life other than making it happen. And I know if I make a "B plan", the "B plan" will work, but my dream will not be fulfilled. That's what B plans are for, anyway. So, I turned to the Faeries' Oracle to see what They had to say: basically, it's a path that requires patience, a lot of energy and commitment, and that if I release my need to use other people's "help" and well-meaning opinions, I will be transformed to go on.

Pretty obvious when I hear it from Their mouths/cards.

Actually, I've been consulting with Them quite a lot lately. I've began reading Brian's cards regularly to check what the next step in overcoming my stuttering is. Yes, now that I'm on a nice upswing with German, too anxious to overfocus on Music and feeling like it's time to ride the White Swan to new grounds, I've been inspired to take action and overcome my stuttering for good. Doctors said many times over they couldn't help me, so I'd better check with the Otherworld, as it hasn't let me down in all these years.

It all began with two Singers of the Realms holding keys. One holding the key to myself, the Singer of Courage, and the other holding the key to the issue, stuttering, the Singer of Intuition. Aiding the Singer of Intuition is the playful Mikle à Muckle. I like spotting the main Faeries in each reading and journeying to the Otherworld to meet them live and get direct guidance. The Singer of Intuition, from inside the cave full of bats where It lives, taught me some in an extremely quiet voice and very few words. Where Intuition speaks from, It has to speak low and little, so as to not disturb the bats in their sleep. The Singer of Courage trains warriors, mages and champions regularly, and gave me some training, too.

So, today I've checked in again to find out what the next step would be. The rainbow faery Iris and her amphibian, archer, and gnome helpers promised me the song of three other Singers in my Quest after I fool another storm. First, the Frog Queen advises a sense of adventure and a spirit of exploration to take me out from the toads' pool to the sunlight the Guardian at the Gate is inviting me to see on the Otherside and, to quote Lady Macbeth the author of the textbook, "discover if we are still frogs or if we have become something much more." The next Singer is the Singer of Transfiguration, which will be revealed by Death. Makes sense that the amphibian has to die for "something much more" to take its place. Especially if it's a something-much-more with a fluid talking. After that, my Faery Guide bridges the Singer of Healing and me. When all is done, the Rainbow will shine in the sky, and yeah, I will overcome stuttering.

Really, if I'm deceiving myself with all the ends meeting so magically and for the first time ever experiencing complete Harmony (musically, metaphorically and otherwise), I don't want to switch back to stuck-in-the-mud mode. I prefer the Rainbow's clarity.

I belong to the Light.

Image from megumis-chan.deviantart.com/