Day 8, Swallow-tailed Kite

just having one of those little upswell-of-gender-despair moments, you know how it is

specifically of the nonbinary variety where like. you know you don't really like how you look¹ or how other people react to you but the Opposite Version wouldn't really be better, really you want something in-between or ambiguous or nothing at all but that isn't actually a real option you get to have in real life, in real life you either get to be a mannish woman whose real gender desires are a painful secret or you get to become Pronoun Pin Guy and then are still effectively seen [and treated!] as a mannish woman, just, you know, a crazy, annoying one

i mean obviously part of the problem here is that i don't really have nonbinary/agender/&c people in my life, i'm super isolated and then even my internet circles have historically been comprised of like. trans people μέν who care about medical transition but not about the language other people use for them (which to be clear is perfectly valid but like. unfortunately my maybe-deepest identity is 'poet (non-practicing)' and i care so much about language. [i may or may not also care abt (some aspects of) medical transition but like. i don't atm have any health insurance or income and also due to the ongoing cptsd frozen-rabbit psychological situation it's a bit hard to tell what ""i"" might ""want"" so. question mark there]). cis+ people δέ who basically are like 'well the real practical, adult approach is just to accept that one's Basically Materially Cis unless one's strongly motivated to medically transition, but, like, your special-snowflake baby sensitivities are Valid or whatever…'² which, again, you have to let people frame things for themselves and pretend it doesn't imply anything abt you, because if nothing else, your differences of inclination wrt how to frame things make your situations different! but unfortunately, even though i do genuinely intellectually believe that, emotionally it hurts my feelings every time, because i really resent this idea that like. cis is the box everyone starts in + stays in unless they kick hard enough to get out of it. bodies shouldn't mean anything by default!!

⸻ ¹ i think this gets worse every time the season changes and i have to re-figure out how to walk the extremely narrow sartorial line i can actually bear, is part of what's going on here ² to be clear and fair to the people in question the level of superiority i've portrayed here is entirely my projection onto them, it's not on them that this stance makes me feel this way, it just does :/

The Crown (Diu Crône) by Heinrich von dem Türlin translated by J. W. Thomas

Daniel von dem Blühenden Tal translated by Michael Resler

Erec by Hartmann von Aue translated by Cyril Edwards

Iwein Knight with the Lion by Hartmann von Aue translated by Cyril Edwards

Lanzelet by Ulrich von Zatzikhoven translated by Thomas Kerth

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach translated by Jessie Weston

Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach translated by Edwin Zeydel

Tristan and Iseult Vol. I by Gottfriend von Straßberg translated by Jessie Weston

Tristan and Iseult Vol. II by Gottfriend von Straßberg translated by Jessie Weston

Wigalois Knight of Fortune’s Wheel by Wirnt von Grafenberg translated by J. W. Thomas

Wigalois Knight of Fortune’s Wheel by Wirnt von Grafenberg (in German)

Wigamur translated by Joseph M. Sullivan

Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (April 25, 2021).

[ID: Tweet by @‍ppyowna that reads:

born to be a hater but forced to understand where you're coming from

/end ID]

A tiny oasis of spring

cracked open the glossaire érotique (1861) and was immediately floored by the very first word in the dictionary being "abailardiser" (verb). definition: "to leave someone in the state the canon fulbert left abailard" (castrated)

OH my god i just spent. literal HOURS cleaning out the fridge and dutifully emptying out even the extremely gross forgotten containers of things into the compost instead of just trashing them unopened. (i have adhd. i don't want to talk about the chicken. it was a bad time.)

anyway yes any other approach would have eaten at me so do i really deserve praise when ultimately i was just saving myself from the bitter reproaches of my own conscience. probably not. however i still want one gajillion neon star stickers because like. HOW conscientious of me. HOW viscerally gross a task. ugh. augh. etc.

AND then i changed the slipcovers on my armchair and started a load of laundry before flopping so. in conclusion i am positively WREATHED with the odor of sanctity atm and i'm making a post about it bc unfortunately due to the aforementioned faulty brain wiring i have a hard time accessing the appropriate Triumphantly Accomplished reward-feeling, so. public self-praise it is!

also. as long as i'm telling you guys silly little things. look at my absurd gluttonous beast who shoved her face into my tomato-y lunch leftovers and now has. well.

anime blush only orange.

more mending :)

this was a bigger hole so it may ultimately make sense to join the two patches together with some sort of little double-sided embroidery or something, idk—in my mind's eye there's a very charming vision of three little tulips—but for now it can rejoin its fellow grubby little urchin in circulation 👍