Anand on Earth

Okay, so let’s say we’re all living in our little utopian village communities, just like in the golden age of nobody, never. Each village develops its own uniquenesses based on the unique contextual challenges and boons we face (like, does your village have an elderberry tree? Mine does.). Great. Everything’s harmonious.

But what if I want to explore new places and people? we might take a liking to each other’s trappings. They might like me more if I go home and get more bong-bong cloaks (or whatever) to give, in exchange for (a) their favor, (b) sex, (c) their delicious bunga-doo pancakes, (d) their not holding my family hostage and killing me. You know, basic reasons for trade.

And what if, once I introduce bong-bong cloaks to my new acquaintances (we’re not friends or enemies yet– we don’t know enough about each other), there’s jealousy and coveting– the perfect reagents for theft or the creative invention of their own style of bong-bong cloaks (which is why intellectual property laws are crap). I mean, I can go back home and make or beg my mother to make, or promise something in return for the whole effing village making bong-bong cloaks to give to my new acquaintances who seem to want them, and then I have these new problems:

(1) Now I owe people favors or whatever I promised them in exchange for their making the bong-bong cloaks,

(2) or I’ve stayed up all night for 3 days straight making them and now I’m exhausted and my decision-making powers are diminished and now i have all this individualist self-reliance and I’m afraid that if I go to sleep, someone in my village will take the bong-bong cloaks themselves and trade them and get the favors/sex/pancakes I was counting on for me and what if they won’t share fairly with me because, after all, I made the stuff and deserve the benefits of trade, but hey, on the other hand, what if I promised a friend a cut of the haul if they’ll take the bong-bong cloaks over for me and take care of passing them out and collecting the payments? As long as we get more than 1, we can each have some (or we can learn fractions and allow a less-than-1 earning).

(3) But all that’s still hoping that the new acquaintances still even give a hoot about bong-bong cloaks by the time we deliver them. I’ve only speculated on a market, or perhaps even taken a specific number of orders. But no one in their right mind would give me something for a cloak that hasn’t even been made yet, because I’m still a stranger. well, some people might, but they’d be foolish (naive) and actually there are many such people in the world. but anyway, i’m not out to make a cheap pancake, no, I’m doing all this because my acquaintances that I hardly know (or, in the case of gift orders, haven’t met at all) say they want bong-bong cloaks and I have the will and knowhow to satisfy their desire. but the problem is, I haven’t asked if anybody needs a bong-bong cloak.

Do you?

Do you even know what one is?

You want one now, though. And you’re willing to pay a reasonable price, just because I’ve worked you up over them.

$9.95.

Plus shipping ($5.00). Yours now for a limited time only. Available in classic black or sexy red. One size fits all. Reversible. Machine-washable. 5-year warranty on parts and labor. Satisfaction guaranteed. But you’ll still want to make sure to buy the latest model. Won’t say when that’s coming out until after you’ve bought enough of this lot– I mean, until you’ve had time to enjoy and develop projecting feelings of affection for your inanimate bong-bong cloak™®.

SO it comes in the mail and it’s an effing paperclip, because you never asked what a bong-bong cloak is and I knew I could sell you something that costs MUCH less than a hand-stitched/woven cloak, and now you feel cheated and you either blame (a) yourself, in which case you do nothing, or (b) me, and if (b), then depending on who you are, you either (1) ask for your money back, (2) demand your money back, (3) sue, (4) send your Uncle “Knees” Delaney to fix my patellae, but I’ll just say, oh goodness me, there must be some fraudulence with the distributor I contract with, and then you (a) give up), or (b) try to track down the distributor, (c) try to decide if a $1,000 hit man is worth a $14 loss.

So those of you who try to track the distributor find out that it’s a dummy corporation registered under my pet dog’s name and has no legal liabilities to perform services as advertised, only as contracted with the manufacturer, and there’s no way you can get your hands on the actual contract between 2 private parties so you don’t know, you don’t know what the distributor was actually contracted to deliver, and I’m giddy as a schoolgirl because I’ve sold a box of 200 paper clips that cost me $0.39 for $10 a clip and I’ve tidied a profit of $1,999.61 AND I’ve sold the original lot of bong-bong cloaks to a high-end dealer to the European aristocracy, 200 of them, for $1,000 each, because no self-respecting nobleman or woman would wear a 2nd rate bong-bong cloak, only the finest, handcrafted-by-traditional-village-people,

and now I’ve got my cash ($201,999.61) and I can fire all my workers before payday (or tell my bone-wary mother she never got a stitch-for-pay agreement in writing and to sod off) and I’ve gotten in a rowboat and am heading straight for a tropical island, but of course the ocean opens up and I am strangled under water by a vengeance-seeking octopus (whose parents were killed by trash from paper clip packaging that got dumped in their food supply) because the goddess is just and karma smites the wicked in their own time.

And who’s to blame for the whole fiasco? My dumb ass, for thinking that “oh gee, mum, I want to go exploring” was a good enough cover for trying to find someone I’m a little less-related to to have sex with.

So I was thinking about stuff this morning–love and family and life choices and the like– and I wondered openly to myself: will I ever find a true equal? Never. a = b is an impossible equation in love. The best you’ll get is a = b + ε, where ε < σ and σ is a critical limit. And equality, sameness, isn't exactly what I want anyway.

How can two beings be equal anyway? What does that mean? There's treated equally under the law, there's equal amounts of distaste for cat farts, but striving for equality in existence seems a misguided effort. Why? We're chasing rainbows. Isn't it enough to see a rainbow's majesty without wishing for more, for a tradeable, spiritually worthless bucket of bronzed wood chips? Equality is not a commercial good; it cannot be bought and sold, because we will not agree on a fair price. Yet there’s this perverse desire to seek out and acquire “equality,” so we can redeem its value somehow. That’s seeking privilege, seeking rights, seeking honor or dignity or respect, but not equality. The truth is no humans are created or made equal. We’re all unequal, and the challenge on earth is to make ourselves okay with that.

Consider:

Now, I’m NOT suggesting that accepting our inescapable inequality is the same as protecting an oppressive status quo. Not so. But if we can differentiate “inequality” from “harm,” if we can look at outcomes instead of status, then we might get somewhere worth going.

So of course I find myself at odds now with the “separate is inherently unequal” doctrine of the last 60 years, and the statement is of course true, and is also premised on the idea that equality = sameness = good/desirable, and Brown v. Board did of COURSE challenge the status quo, and so the status quo has shifted and we need to move on. Because if you look at how people organically form communities, there’s a lot of homogeneity — chucking people in a blender to make an engineered blend of society is going to (a) piss a lot of people off, and (b) hurt a lot of people. Especially if we scale this idea to the global level. What we need is a more equal sharing of clean foot and water and air and access to trees. That’d improve global health and happiness and decrease pain and struggle and need for police.

But how do we achieve this state? What does this place-worth-going look like? What lines the path? What obstacles do we face there? An obvious solution proposed by many other people already is to reorganize societies “back” (?) to self-sustaining, need-based villages with a consensus-based/non-authoritarian governance structure.

The problems with global capitalism can also be found in setting up our little utopian villages, because it is difficult to share:
(a) over large groups,
(b) over long distances,
(c) across boundaries,
(d) period.

If someone asks you to share a nut or berry in December, you have to ask yourself hard questions like, do I have enough to last the winter? Can I get more? Can the asker help in the future? And if you calculate incorrectly, you might starve to death. So on the one hand there’s faith and hope, and on the other reason and worry.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2, in which I explore a common pitfall among little utopian villages everywhere.

(to be amended as they occur to me)

9 to 5 (Colin Higgins, 1980)
Connie and Carla (Michael Lembeck, 2004)
Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004)
Baby Mama (Michael McCullers, 2008)
Whip It! (Drew Barrymore, 2009)
Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)

note: preponderance of male directors…

Bechdel test:
The film must:
(a) Have at least 2 women characters;
(b) who talk to each other;
(c) about something other than a man.

My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)
Chutney Popcorn (Nisha Ganatra, 1999)
Bend It Like Beckham (Gorinder Chadha, 2002)
Touch of Pink (Ian Iqbal Rashid, 2004)
Loins of Punjab (Manish Acharya, 2007)

I hated Goldilocks with passion when I was in preschool. She was so delicious and obvious in her evilness. Stupid little appropriator! Those bears should have appropriEATEN her. Actually, I believe there’s a version where they do.

That story blog (linked, above) is a lesson in compassion, I tell you what.

One time I had a dream that everyone around me were bears, and I was a bear, too, so I wasn’t scared of getting eaten or anything, I was just, you know, chilling. Like, as a bear. Eating fish and berries and pawing bee hives and ransacking white people’s campsites in state parks and stuff. Sleeping in a pile of 25 of my best friends. Standing in rivers. The uuzh.

Anyhow, so all us bears were gonna go hunting together for grubs, but we had to run to get there, which was weird, but we had to run because, like, hunters had been encroaching on our territory over the last few years, and but then I was back at the time of the first time one of us had gone down with a bullet, but then the bear who got shot was Cher, or something, and then I woke up and was worried that Lady Gaga won’t be established enough as a long-term contender if (god forbid) Cher should be taken from us suddenly, especially with the impending destruction of the America LLC period of Earth history (and, assumedly, the music Industry).

Maybe I should go learn what kind of plants near my house are edible and do my stupid legal-name change so I can start saving up to invest in solar.

Love,

Anand

In the mean time, a sketch I’ve written for Finch & me to perform on camera (some day):

(credits)
Finch: (climbs up to top of cat tower) I’m a cat, I want to go up high.
Anand (me): Neat. Have you ever wondered why you want to climb up high?
Finch: No. I’m a cat. (stretch) Pet me!
Anand (me): (pets Finch) Do you think you climb up so high because you’re low-to-the-ground, and you have this biological urge to—
Finch: (looks up from petting-induced daze) What’s “biological”?
Anand (me): Oh. You’re a cat.
(credits)

Yesterday I was subjected to routine questioning about my genitals. Such are the moments that remind me I am part of a vibrant community of respected and dignified animals known as human beings on this planet we call Earth. Or something.

The questioner this time was a friend of a friend I was meeting for the first time. The friend-of-friend (FoF) had made some comment about his testicles (actually, I believe his balls came up in the context of a proclamation of his preference for a female medical practitioner in physical health examinations, and his disappointment in the paucity of hernia checks in his last few appointments), and then, as is natural in male-male relationships in this country, he asked me about my own testicles.

When I responded that I don’t have any testicles, he looked agog. Amazed that ball-less-ness (as I understand, a major bogeyman among male-identified testicular people) could coexist with the normal-enough guy he’d been talking to, the FoF’s curiosity was, naturally enough, piqued.

Okay, I’m too angry to keep up this facade of dry humor. I got really pissed off, but went into teacher mode instead of telling him to go read a fucking book or look anything up on the fucking internet. FOR THE RECORD:

1. I do not have testicles.

2. The reason for my nonposession of testicles is that I am transgender.

3. No, I have not had testicles removed, I was born without them, as I am a female-to-male transgender person, and not a male-to-female transgender person.

4. Did who look at my what? Please use intelligible vocabulary.

5. I was a lady, and now I am a man.

6. Yes, I take testosterone. No, not via pill (oral testerone was used in the 1940s, but the damaging effects on the liver showed researchers that another delivery system would be more prudent), via injection. Intramuscularly in my buttcheek.

7. No, I do not get ‘roid rage, because (a) I take appropriate doses, and (b) I take my shot in the muscle for slow, steady absorption into the bloodstream, instead of directly into a vein.

8. Yes, my English is just fine, because I am from Illinois.

9. I am from Illinois.

10. I don’t actually know very much about sex work in India, but I do know there is a large body of scholarship on the subject.

11. Yes, sex trafficking is indeed a problem. I am glad you enjoyed your stay in Amsterdam.

12. Oh, yes, you’re referring to the caste system, which is different from the variety of ethnic groups living indigenously in India.

13. No, those are names for different groups of people based on culture, that is not the caste system.

14. So the major religions in India are Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity (Catholicism, due to Portuguese colonization, especially in South India). The caste system was a 5-tiered class structure meant to explain the various–

15. Yes, so the caste system exists across multiple ethnic groups in India.

16. Yes, Hindus do exert major influence over government and public discourse in India. That is actually very astute of you, based on what I am learning about your understanding of the context we are discussing.

17. We are having hot weather these days. I find it difficult to sleep when the air pressure and temperature are so high.

18. No, I am not a ‘hermaphrodite’. How interesting that you have met a woman who has an atypical genital arrangement. There are many types of variation in genitals, and it is very rare for someone to be born with both penis and vagina, because of the way the tissues develop in utero. [I meant to talk about ovaries/testicles here and not penis/vagina. I regret my error in speech.]

19. No, I was not “one of those girls with moustaches”. Thank you for your sensitivity to a subject that has been cause for feelings of ridicule, shame, and general unpleasantness for the large number of women who have a condition called Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome and many other women who, for various reasons, do indeed grow virilized hair on their cheeks, neck, and lips. I object to your cavalier and demeaning characterization of these women.

20. What an interesting point in this conversation to mention that you did not mean ‘anything’ by your compliment on my linguistic skills in the English language and that you wish people like me would not be so quick in our defensive actions.

21. Where are you from? That is very interesting. I am glad you enjoyed your horticulture classes.

22. I have two sisters, both older than me. No, neither of them are “married with lots of kids”. One of them is married with no children, the other one is partnered to a woman, also with no children. By the way, both of my sisters have fascinating careers. One is a cognitive neuroscientist and is conducting research towards developing new and better educational methods for people with learning disabilities. My other sister is a community organizer, working to bring parents, teachers, school administrators, churches, and

23. Thank you for telling me that my brain scientist sister is more interesting. You have now succeeded in devaluing one of my sisters and showing fascination in another one. I am now in an awkward position.

24. I have enjoyed meeting you and sharing information across cultural boundaries. Now I will go to see another friend, who 10 years ago walked across a desert to come to this country. We will discuss my discussion with you, among other subjects, including the alarming, heartbreaking, infuriating, and ongoing street wars executed by drug cartels and police in Mexico, and the insensibly horrific siutation in Ciudad Juarez. Thank you for your time.

So I get to babysit this amazing three-year-old from time to time. His parents are social justicey-community-organizy-activisty-radical-professor types, which makes my job a million times easier than it could be otherwise. You guys, this is a situation in which my being trans, anti-capitalist, brown, and queer as f*ck are low-liability assets!

Anyway, sometimes I sit around thinking up fun things to do with the kid, whom I’ll call K. K is adorable. He’s got lots of curly hair, amazing pitch and rhythm skills, and one heck of a temper. Usually, he’s very reasonable, but this kid’s a Libra/Scorpio cusp, and when he wants what he wants, he wants it now and in no other way but his. He is also 3, did I mention that?

Anyhow, I think K is growing up in dangerous psychological times, when the allure of conformity is masked by superficial claims of infinite customization and individuality. Product integration (and, more broadly, the sewing of actively-planned messages into the under-fabric of all “mainstream” (=giant corporation) media) makes consumer desire seem natural, and as someone who still feels like fighting the urge to replicate the lifestyles I see on Modern Family, I know that this new, even-more-nefarious form of advertising and consumerism will lead people not to satisfaction, but the same kind of “corporate emptiness” (as Mr. Rogers called it) that has dominated U.S. macroculture since the turn of the last century.

Now, people of every political persuasion will tell you two things:

(1) You gotta start educating kids when they’re tiny, and be consistent, if you want them to grow up (safe) Like You (never were); and

(2) The OTHER SIDE is targeting the little tiny vulnerable innocent CHILDREN and we have to FIGHT BACK.

Reductions of self/other distinctions to meaningless blobs aside, both claims are still true.

When I was a kid (oh nooooooo, I sound like a grown-up), my mom had a hard and fast rule: my sisters and I were allowed to watch television programs on channels with commercials, but if we ever asked for anything we saw on a commercial, those privileges would be suspended immediately. I remember one year we were cut off from PBS, too, and had only channel 3, which we used to watch VHS tapes (which ended up being a fair amount of Disney, so oops!). As a kid, I did my best to adhere to the rule, and as an adult, I think mom-lady was right on.

And yet, I’m as much an instant-gratification-seeking millennial as many others in my generation. So, to enhance my own impulse control and teach K the value of patience, I’ve decided I want to take him on a field trip to Meijer, a regional super-retail chain.

Goal for me: seek, find, select, acquire, and purchase cat litter and dental floss in 20 minutes or less. Do not buy anything else. Do not pass toy section on first attempt. Do not dress K up in cute little clothes I have no reason to buy for him.

Goal for K: (phase 1) do not ask for anything, (phase 2) want nothing but the inner joy that comes from feeling spiritually whole. Okay, maybe that’s phase 3.

Challenges: overstimulation, wanderlust, other tall people (um, relative to K) with pants that look like mine, and hundreds of thousands of shiny packages cloying for attention.

Reward: we get to drive over bumps in the road (K loves riding over bumps. As I explained to him the first time he mentioned “more bumps!”, we live in Michigan, where there is no shortage of potholes, and I am more than happy to oblige him this small thrill).

Coming soon: Reality check, or, what actually happens when K & I get to Meijer.

Resist harm.