Ordinary Courage

Knowing…

  that the sound the match makes when it strikes

         to light the candle

     necessary for illuminating a path -

       may draw gunfire in darkness.

And doing it anyway,

           because finding  a place safe to be

                 authentic-

                     is stronger than your fear.

Opening…

     to feel the vibration and thrum

        of another’s heartbeat,

              even from within the bitterness

     of cursing your God

          for apparently putting you on this earth

             to walk alone.

Looking…

    into the eyes and heart

        of a great or petty tyrant, 

            and recognizing something

vulnerable and hot and shameful

      in your own being

               staring back.

Admitting…

   that no amount of washing

      erases the stains of humanity

    on the soul’s best garment, as it wears over time

          and still not wearing

             either another's armor or borrowed coat

  out in public.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

I watched a video this morning. It was of a religiously motivated beheading. A woman dressed in ordinary clothes, that you or I might wear, being crudely but efficiently beheaded with a sharp knife, in a crowd of onlookers. For some small, non-violent offense against religious sensibilities... probably adultery or premarital sex or refusing marriage or belonging to the wrong class of people or for some payment her husband or brother or father refused to send. It was impossible to tell where the video was. It culd have been Mexico, it could have been the Middle East. She was dark featured but nondesript. Point is... someone, a lot of someones, thought that she deserved this.

*** graphic content ahead***

You could see the knife enter her throat. You could see real blood pour as her arteries were pierced. You could see the business-like method by which her head was severed from her body, the spinal cord sawed through, as a life bled away. The triumph as her head was lifted with her sightless staring eyes looking out. I did not listen to the video with sound. The triumph and body stance of her appointed moral executioner suggested that the crowd cheered.

****

People asked me recently why words matter, why people are so dmaned sensitve to "just words." It is because of this video. Because words frame the culture we want to live in. Because words that dehumanize others enable unpseakable acts of cruelty in person. Because what happened in that video is happening to girls and women in many parts of the world for thier humanity of having sex, making poor choices in partners, being born in the wrong place. It is happening to journalists and human rights workers. it is happening at an alarming rate to people who speak out on the environment. It could realistically be me in that video one day.

Words allow us to connect. Empathy lets us feel the fear and pain of the woman being beheaded in that video; imagining it is our sister, friend, wife, daughter, niece. Or us. Honesty lets us face the discomfort of being one of that crowd who watched and did nothign, or cheered, or wished they were elsewhere. It requires courage to realize we could be the one working the knife.

Ordinary courage, to me, is being willing to stand up and say, I want to take steps to ensure that my daughter is not the one slaughtered for her weakness of being female. That my son is never the one holding that knife. That neither stand by and let this happen, either in reality or vicariously, in the places they consider to be their community. The larger I choose to make my community, the more I am forced to care.

It is just me, but my only response to violence can be to make the light stronger.

**updated**

I spoke with the friend through whom I saw the video. He is a student, studying human behavior in religious zealotry; he watches these videos to understand them, to analyze them, to catalog them by type and commonalities; etc. He said, "I have seen several, and it turns my stomach each time."

This was not staged. It is one thing to watch a movie simulation on the big screen. It is another thing to read about it. It is another thing to watch it happening. I am no stranger to bodily trauma, but this left me unable to function for a full day. I felt there was value in facing it, so I watched. There is value in facing our collective shadow, the logic of incivility and dehumanization carried to its inherent potential. I cannot ask anyone else to watch it. If you feel, as I did, that you need to, for your own reasons, I have the link. Message me. I have decided I will not post it here.

***

This work was also translated into Spanish:

http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/zorra_encantada/1166588/

Reviews

[Ken Simm.]

Your notes are intrinsicallly part of the write and I feel strongly should not be seen as mere notes. (as if they ever could)
Again I wonder how people feel so strongly they are right. So much in the right they may take anothers life for whatever reason be it religious, be it personal, be it political or be it regarded as right minded.
Again it is one thing to murder it is a whole other thing to do it as if justified. And here I know I am preaching to the converted, (I've just realised whilst writing that last sentence how ironic that sounds) but evangelism of any kind is inherently wrong minded. It is perhaps the most serious neurosis we have suffered from in recent times. Witch hunts and inquisitions of history notwithstanding. It is this because it cannibal feeds upon itself as this horrific and inhuman act signifies.
This is the wrong of the world. Hate generates hate. The karmic debt placed upon the world by such acts can never be repayed. No the debt is placed upon humanity as a whole. Not just the chief perpatrators, not just the audience but the whole of humanity. Even we who watch the video played on our 21st century technology are as guilty in many ways. Why because the murderering societies that perform these acts know they can publicise their barbarism and therefore recieve an extra frisson by doing so. They can ultimately claim no justification but then morally neither can we. It is allowed. It always has been either overtly or tacitly. It is explained away. The disease is never, ever treated. The symptoms may be recognised once in a while but this is only the tutting of a helpless adult when faced with unreasonable behaviour. It can only be fought against and it is a war that cannot be won.
Your poem is reactionary, political, beautiful, angry, and revolutionary. It is remarkably honest, forthright and strong. It is needed, it is creative in the midst of absolute horror. It is painful and at the same time life affirming. I found it strangely loving.It works on so many levels and yet it will never work on the one level it should do.
This is the reason I feel very, very strongly you should never publise the link to this video. Your write is the correct response. To put it simply it will not be seen by the majority as educational. It will be seen by those who should not see it despite your best efforts. It will be used for the wrong reasons and you will be giving that obscene act of degregation and inhumanity a further life it should neither have or deserve. You are fighting in the correct way. Most who view that video are not you. The people who wuld get the points you are trying to make have got the points already.
I am sorry about the preaching attitude I seem to have taken in this review. A charge of rightous evangelism could also be left at my door and I would have to hold my hands up and say mea culpa. Perhaps it is a question of degree.

[Marie Anzalone]

Ken, yo are given eprmission to put typos on my page any time. I have thought about your words all day. I am tired, and I am getting up at 4:00 am to start workign again. Please forgive me if it takes me a while to come back and respond properly. In my defense, I have a rough draft of a thesis to finish for a meeting tomorrow. I simply do nto have the mental or emotional energy remaining to do this justice right now.

[Marie Anzalone]

Ken:
Dear friend. I could learn so much in your company.
Firdt, let me ask a technical question: do you have any idea how to make the notes into something more than an author's note, in relation to the poem itself?

I discussed your words with myself and others. There are no easy answers. Do we have the moral luxury of continuing to turn away? Would viewing it make us hardened, even more than we already are? Would it depend on whose story we focused on in that video: the executioner's, the crowd's, the society's, ours, or the woman's? Can we argue that she has a right to have her story told, her face remembered, her quiet terror, memorialized? That we have the imperative to see such things as a reminder of how wrong things can go? That when the Holocaust can be denied; the use of chemical weapons and starvation as tactics of control by governments, ignored; genocide forgotten- does it take soemthign of more shock value to break us out of our shells and find that empathy we so lack? Or does it just contribute to raising the bar of what we find commonplace?

I could not function for a full day after watching that video. A fellow writer, a man, took 3 days to recover. When I came back from the Peace Corps, I found that most people had about a 5 minute attention span for listening to what I had witnessed and experienced there. My friends who were soldiers in VietNam, Iraq, Afghanistan- they typically don't even get asked to tell their stories. I make it apoint to listen, to observe- but you bring up a good question: are we any better, if we feel powerless to do anyhting other than witness? And what can you say about people who excuse such violence with a shrug, or worse yet, get enjoyment from watching it?

In the end, I decided to change my note to make the video available for those who felt a need to watch it. That way, I have some small control over its accessibility. People can find it themselves if they really wanted to. My friend, who, studies sociology and human cruelty, told me how. It is like any other mind-altering experience: under controlled conditions, in a user of great maturity, it has great power to awaken and enlighten. Otherwise, it has great power to destroy, enable, insulate, and encourage apathy or violence.

One would wish that on a writer's site, you would find more of the former. Bitter experience has taught me that this is far from the reality.

[Ken Simm.]

I'm sorry my friend I don't know the answer to your technical question. But I will try to find out if you like.
I too have considered your words deeply and your reply to my review equally. I find I am still of the same opinion when it comes to who should see this and who would want to see this video and their motives for watching. I feel that I would find the motives of anyone who wanted to watch this atrocity, suspect.
I will add the caveat unless you knew them very well indeed.
I still feel that all the pertinant points are made to the educated in your fine poem. I further still feel that anyone desiring to watch this awful thing when they know what it is would be doing it from the most spurious of motives.
I feel no-one can have 'correct' motives here. The thing is too raw, too emotive. Speaking as an artist I would feel the thing goes beyond the senses and perhaps affect us in more ways than we can specify. This is how neurosis are built. Trauma can come second or third hand without the subject realising and become deep rooted.
If you like to call us the enlightened or the intelligent or the experienced we cannot fail to be moved by your vivid description. In short we don't have to see the video for the full effect to move us, make us wish to act, for us to do something.
My wrry is as it has always been that the majority will want to watch from the most spurious of motives and therefore weaken the necessary outpouring of outrage, grief, support for the oppressed, attempts to understand and change the oppressors. I wonder if the posters of the original video know how many hits they have had and their reasons for posting in the first place. Do they see the number of hits as all messages of support? If they do then they are fatally wrong.
To know this is happening is enough for me. I know enough without seeing that woman's blessed face, ithout knowing her name. Without feeding my darker side, whatever that may be. I say that because I honestly don't know.

[Ken Simm.]

I also think that we do become immune to these things to some extent. Just think how how more graphic TV has become over recent years. I also believe that the way to change is right mindedness over time, not becoming immune because it becomes commonplace.
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
Gandhi.

[Marie Anzalone]

Sorry this has taken me so long to get back to, my friend. Among other things, I just plain feel traumatized revisiting this work.

I definitely appreciate your views and points. That same Gandhi quote also appealed to me. As I stated before, I have no easy amswers. I cannot even join the ones who say, "love is the answer," because blind "love" without critical awareness of a larger context leads to these situations. Jeffrey Sachs makes a very compelling argument dispelling the myth of the lazy poor person, and also points out that the US culture (at the time) was the only one in the world who actually believed in victim-blaming as a general rule. It seems that others have caugh tup to us in some regards, although recently empathy studies show "Western" cultures to be very incapable of empathy (one of the strongest indicators for psychopathy) compared to the rest of the world... with the US as an outlier even among outliers. The study I read brought up some very good questions about the validity of experiments into so-called universal human nature when the subject population was based in the US (or other Western cultures). I have found this to be true in my own interactions with the Maya Indians of Central America. It seems more than justcultural differences... basic core values and abilities are very different. I am often caught unawares by the astounding level of emotional maturity in some areas, and their knowledge of current world events, and the high degree of empathy they tend to show, although our influence is working its way down slowly, and there is a shift towards a greater focus on money and status in the younger generation than I saw before.

I have conversed about topics like this is some length with others, including several other writers on this site, but I can really only ever speak for myself. Is there a difference between seeing staged (sanitized) violence and real violence? I tell you the thing that haunts me most about this video is not the anger or hatred... there is none. it is the passivity with which all is accepted, the impartiality and efficiency with which it is done. I have butchered animals with more compassion than that woman was shown. As my venerable friend Lonestar pointed out, after he watched it, the guy used the same technique his father (a professional butcher) uses for decapitating goats. I do not know how it is in the UK, but I can tell you here in the US, it is very easy to believe that we are moving towards an apathy-based, discompassionate, unempathetic general culture. There seems to be lacking a general sense of being able to connect, at all, to another's humanness- a discomfort in examining tough questions. We prefer our easy answers, prefer to think people deserve what they get, prefer to pretend to want a Hammurabic code returned. There is so much rhetoric about what should happen, including violent hateful comments to the tune of of brutal, torture, rape, cruelty towards those who offend us in some way. It really is sickening to be surrounded by it. We tedn to become immune to the speech, but should we?

If these same god-fearign Christian folks were forced to watch something that shook them to their cores, not allowed to turn aside at the nasty parts, wold they still call for death by torture, even in jest? Would adults railing loudly against reasonable laws for restriction of assault weapons access, feel the same way after viewing the corpse of a human child after being shot by one? Would their hearts be broken enough for compassion to sink in again, or would it make them even colder and less empathetic?

I get so tired, Ken. It seems to me that much of the capacity for human evil rests on the response to that last question.

[Ken Simm.]

There are I believe several reasons for lack of empathy and compassion in todays western society and I agree the centre of the universe must be incredibly crowded.
Why did I get a D my students honestly would ask me astounded at their own lack of success? Because that is what your paper was marked at. No but why did 'I'' get a D come on? They were honestly puzzled. Why should you get an A you did nothing to deserve it? Duh! Because I'm me. This happened so many times. Yes this perhaps has more to do with work ethic and consumerism than empathy to what is going on around them but it has also a great deal to do with seeing your own role in the way of life that you are shown. That you come to think is your natural right. That you are taught by, tabloid, jingoistic, scare mongering news. That you are shown everyday in everyway possible that you deserve the world for your own pleasure. That you are shown impersonal love, impersonal violence against those lesser creatures, (and that is everyone else) as entertainment for your jaded pallete. We have become a race of mini Caligula's where anything can be seen as not educational but entertaining.
When scenes of war are brought into the living room with ease. When scenes of rape are seen quite happily as something to keep you occupied then humanness, compassion, willingness to listen and try to understand becomes boring. It just does not give the shock to the jaded system that violence and intolerance does.
To continue this feeling of infinite superiority and therefore pleasure on must have a system by which one can return to justify actions. Militant religion has fitted into this role quite nicely. And because there are a number of militant religions it becomes quite easy to say my way is correct and yours must be destroyed. The meek therefore shall not inherit the earth.
Disageement is heathy but remember that when it was commonplace to bear weapons manners became of prime importance. Yes of course mortality was high and killing fairly commonplace there also but parhaps a serious attempt to see the others point of view was seen as an attempt to rationalise the human condition. A failed attempt perhaps but an attempt nontheless.
The God of militant religion has become the God of the old testament. A personal God of vengence. A personal deity of justification rather than faith. It is no accident that the lobby for the arming of individuals is closely linked with right wing Christianity.' I must be right because God told me so. No He didn't. you told yourself so from inside your own paranoia. When it comes to Gun control and episodes as the one above absolutes control. There are no grays there are only the primary colours of personal rightousness. There is no solution to this within civilisation. The only solution is on the other side of absolute anarchy. To quote Gandhi again an eye for an eye blinds the whole world.
I think we must begin to see that the above obscenity and our reactions to end signal the ending of our civilisation. Perhaps the 'I'm alright Jack' attitude is not wrong after all. It is preparation.

[Marie Anzalone]

Such a subtle nuance between religion and spirituality... and a universe of dangerous misunderstandings contained within that nuance. This is where I ram my head against walls, Ken... because I was brought up to have answers. To find them, create them. This thing is a shapeshifter, it is amorphous, the very act of observation changes it. How do you fight that? Can you?

A college professor that I admired taught me, "writers write to teach us compassion." There is compassion and life and light in your words. Only light has ever reached into dark places. I cannot dwell in the dark too long, but I feel the need to face it form time to time, to remind myself. Perhaps I am as hypocritical as the rest? I like to think, as you said, it will prepare me for what is coming. A person who retains compassion and desensitization is empowered to act when necessary. At the Boston marathon bombings, combat veterans ran towards the blast victims and saved most of them because of this kind of empowerment.

[Ken Simm.]

Brought up to have answers. Surely the journey is more important than the destination? Perhaps the Scientist in you wants the ending of answers whereas the Artist in you wants to always seek for them creatively.

[Marie Anzalone]

We all have our fatal flaw, Ken, and I fear this one may be mine. It has stubbornly all attempts to eradicate it, and always gets me into trouble. A blessed morning to you when you get this.

[h d e rushin]

what responsibility the witness?

a chance meeting of the man ( a neighbor) who lives just two doors from me, when I, the ATT service
man, had to enter his house to service his internet connection, only to discover him and his family
living in total filth and squalor. i had seen some poor living conditions here in Detroit but nothing
quite this bad. poverty makes a sound like no other; it never comes into consonance or accord
with the sweet harmony of life that I have known. being human means that I can hate all forms
and degrees of brutality.

i have seen the images of a beheading on the internet. i swear to you dear friend, it's not just you
who's response to senseless violence is to make the light stronger. and there is something ungodly
about runaway justice meted out as punishment. whatever a person might have done they certainly
dont deserve their heads to be lopped off, and filmed no doubt, and witnessed by other humans.
and just like my neighbor two doors away, i spend far too much time being appalled. but then,
as a poet, perhaps not enough time.

you have answered the prophetic, even apocalyptic question of what is the role of the poet in
todays society. town cryer? mischief maker? truth teller? shaman? appanage? signifier? messenger?
There is value in facing our collective shadow. and you have done it here.

history: in the early 70s the Black american literary movement struggled with the definition of
what was the Black aesthetic. The conclusion was that any form of art that didn't further the
'revolution' was of no use to it. difine the revolution to mean the armed struggle against the
racist policies in education or government or housing or working conditions, etc. careers were lost.
good artist, writers, poets, playwrights were lost for being not militant enough. then 2008 came
and what was true of discrimination was universal to every race and culture. that the banks had
cheated good working people. that faney mae and freddy mac were just shammers. that the collapse
of the world market meant that the search for the Black aesthetic was platitudinous and prosaic
but illusory.

you're a tremendous writer.
dana

[Marie Anzalone]

I am too tired to respond to this marvelous review, dana, but will return tomorrow. Blessings.

[Marie Anzalone]

I have learned to control most of my emotions when confronted with some of the situations of grinding, developing world poverty with which I work, but sometimes, things get to me, too. I can understand your horror at what you found two doors down. I worte a story on here in 2010, called "What Value a Life," in which I described some of the effects of inequality on indigenoous children here in Central America; about being called in as the town veterinarian to care for a child with severe third degree burns left untreated for a month, and then to deliver that child's sibling on the dirt floor of a hut in front of an open fire. Things like that have a tendency to change you. Senseless loss, however, I think I get. I am honored to know that others would make the light stronger int he face of senseless, targeted violence. We do not need a devil; we need a reconciliation with the value of human dignity and right to co-exist.

I think there is space and necessity for a revival of what I heard described as women's power. You see, it was described to me as thus: the power of men, is that they know what are the causes worth dying for. Machismo- the power of men. We need to return, though, to a balance of "mamisma"- the power fo women. A return to the innate understanding of what makes life worth living for. And that is neither a Black nor a White nor a Latino nor a Muslim thing. It is a vital and necessary human thing.

[TL Boehm]

There are three poems I have written "Torreon" "Integrity Leaking Away " (both are here) and Muhammed AL Durrah (not here) that deal with "horrific" content. I know that this kind of writing is not for everyone - but I also believe that poets can get in where others can't - because of our wordsmithing - or maybe we just are able to articulate our strong feelings - perhaps we commune with them more than others - and we are able to take the issue beyond the bullet point reality - to the core of humanity.
As I read this - I think of how so many are simply numb to the brutality that exists in the human soul. For me - things like this - they change me for ever.
The poem is strong, and a tribute (mine aren't - they are unbridled RANTS) It stands and it looks you in the eye. It is a measured conversation to the heart - an admonishment - and that is so hard to do when emotions are seething. (I can't do it)
Kudos to you for being able to articulate such awful reality with conviction and clarity.

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks, TL. You are describing what I call the abilty of a writer or poet to "bear witness." There is a reason that those with the most ability to face their society's reality and transcribe it into truth; are the first targeted in any fascist regime. Martin Espada gives testament to the Chilean poets imprisoned and tortured under Pinochet's regime, as just one example. I have a long way to go yet... but am also realizing that things like this have permanently changed me. I felt the same way delivering a woman's baby on a dirt floor 10 years ago, and I feel the same way listening to stories of grinding hunger and hardship. Some things you just don' walk away from unchanged. Kudos to you for understanding the raw power and necessity of facing the dark head-on, sometimes even without flinching. I appreciate that. It is a rare quality indeed.

[quinfinn]

i witnessed a brutal beheading on the internet about 8 years ago by the terrorists overseas....an American "contractor"..it was nauseating and i had bad dreams for months after. well, this definitely fits the bill for my contest, and is an excellent study on humanity. well done, and thank you!

[Marie Anzalone]

You're welcome, quinn, and thank YOU for reading and reviewing. There is something so coldly matter-of-fact and business-like about these beheadings that it does not surprise me you had bad dreams for months. I completely empathize. It is like seeing a shell of a human being, emptied of all life and spirit, working as an automaton of the "people's will." Almost hive-like, and dreadfully scary. I am glad you appreciated the juxtaposition of my words with what inspired them. Best.

[Cool Handless Luke]

Admitting…
that no amount of washing
erases the stains of humanity
on the soul’s best garment, as it wears over time
and still not wearing
either another's armor or borrowed coat
out in public.

Thought provoking words to say the very least Marie. It is our lot perhaps that these stains are burdens we bear even when our own actions are not the ones to claim the horror. Guilty by association. We can't hide our humanity. I wonder if perhaps this is why so many people are so in love with the romance of vampirism (new word)? Maybe our own humanity seems a curse to us. I shall have to return to this piece in a bit. My train of thought is jumbled right now and I fear I am not making any sense. I am trying to think logically when my heart is claiming my ink, so to speak, at the moment. Until then, a very thoughtful piece worded as only you could...

[Leica]

Years ago I worked on a campaign with Amnesty Int'l to stop the death by stoning of a woman accused of adultery. By the grace of almost a million supporters she was freed.. That has not deterred the hundreds of deaths that have occurred since then, all in the name of their religion..

Your poem is so well written and I wish in my lifetime writers would never have to pen these sentiments again...

[Marie Anzalone]

Oh Leica, is there a topic more important than religious intolerance today? intolerance of ideas, of freedom of thought and expression, of sexuality- do we not butt up against these things every single day? I saw recently where someone asked the very wise question, regarding gun control, "when did a 'well-regulated militia' come to mean 'an unregulated mob?'" I would ask the same of religion, especially the two with the greatest numbers of intolerant members, Christianity and Islam: when did messages of "love humanity, honor human dignity, turn the other cheek, let he who is without sin, etc." get twisted to mean, "exclude and kill he who does not look like you or think like you?"

[iliOZ]

first of all i love the tone of your voice
i admire you for allowing your soul to be "touched" (it is a rarity)

as for me ...
i don't even want to remind myself how many times i passed limbless beggars without throwing them a coin
how many times i did throw a coin ... don't make up for it
i am guilty as charged

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, iliOZ- this is something I struggle with all the time, as well. Some days I find myself getting irritated with beggars who interrupt me at the office while I am trying to work. They see the color of my skin, and they make assumptions about me. And it digs under my skin that they do it; it digs even more that I am irritated and feel used, like an object. That I get upset. Even when they are able-bodied, I remind myself that we are all struggling with something, and who am I to judge? But then you get to the point where it is about human dignity. And that is where my anger stems from. Why do they let people do this to them? Reduce them to this? Guess we all need to hold up more mirrors sometimes.

[gombeggar]

i realy like the structure of the poem...terrible the subject matter that inspired u

[Marie Anzalone]

Thanks, gombeggar, believe me just wathcing it on video was horribly traumatic. I agreed with Lonestar when he said he did not want to live in a world any more where this was possible. The only silver lining is the beautiful and thoughtful conversation it generated here... see especially my dialogue with Ken and Diego below, and also be sure to check out Lonestar's movign reaction to the same video.

[Mike Emil]

i've been drinking tto, er toto, er too muchk to mak a sound statement here
i'll get back to you HAI!!!

[Marie Anzalone]

:-p

[therisa]

I wish I could down, in words, how your writer's note and poem, affected me. Myself, I have endure almost a lifetime of brutality, whether verballi, physically or psychologically, for being myself. Someone, who is different, never truly comfortable within their own skin. Until I realized, I was trapped in the wrong body, genderwise. I know, in many country, this admission of mine, would sign my own death warrant, for being a transsexual and lesbian.

[Marie Anzalone]

There is a lot of bravery in your words, therisa. I cannot relate to yuor specific issues, but I can relate to the violence inherent in bullying of other types. We have 1000 types of bullying in the US, but one thing we can say, with pride, is that people do not have to worry about being put to death for being different... and they are free to go where they feel more comfortable. The potential for hatred and rage is the same in all human hearts, across all nations and cities, but in soem places there are enforced checks on is expression, and it makes life more tolerable. I wish you well in your journey.

[therisa]

Sadly, for the transcommunity, we still face open hostile from some parts of society, whether in the United States or Canada. Especially, when the person doesn't openly pass, as their chosen gender.

[Marie Anzalone]

Seen its fringes for much of my adult life- I do not know it directly, but have seen it in others. I have seen them treated well in artist and UU communities.

[therisa]

I wish, I could share these happier experiences, Marie. :)

[Marie Anzalone]

I hope you find them

[therisa]

Have found some people, but its a long battle to educate people that being trans, doesn't means I am Satan's spawn.

[Baby Ricochet]

I love this. The first stanza is particularly meaningful to me. Thank you for posting it

[Marie Anzalone]

Yes, thank you, I could see where it would be for you.
I appreciate your review.