Name: Protasekretis
Age: 43
Gender: male.. trigender..androgyne..
Country: Finland
Good morning. I write this on my kitchen table, with a hot cup of coffee, and the washing machine is making noise in otherwise silent apartment. The name I chose here, Protasekretis, is a title from byzantine bureaucracy. Sailing to Byzantium is a poem by Yeats, a metaphor for a spiritual journey. My first language is finnish; english second, then swedish, and russian, french and italian, in that order. I consider myself an universal soul.
Little nervous about writing this introduction. To be honest, I don't know how to write. Sometimes I think I have a talent, even think myself as a poet, but then see the harsh reality, and must admit that I am able only to pour my messy, chaotic stream of consciousness only confusing people and infecting them with the virus. I suppose I could write better, if I had more patience, and didn't surrender so much to every creative and emotional impulse.
I am very literature minded. I write through Michelangelo, Yeats, Blake, H.C Andersen, William Burroughs, I take inspiration here and there, imitate and copy. I can't help that. I know it will alienate some people, and may make me even more lonely. But I just can't talk about myself without bringing here the whole history of art and literature. Maybe it is my way of being social. All my life I've found comfort from books, and enjoyed reading. Isn't it natural, that I identify with writers? Some say that I am only imposing my ego, or compensating my sense of inferiority, by comparing myself with geniuses. I don't think so. I think, they are there just to keep company.
This morning I feel tired. Too much work. I read a book about Finnish lesbian poets, then arrange mundane things by using mobile phone. I think if life only could be that easy. Lie in bed, relaxed, and only contact the world by the phone. I dream of having servants doing practical things for me. All byzantine rulers had their cubicularius and nipsistiarios, I can not fathom why I have to do everything by myself. What a cruel faith.
By my basic character I am open and social, and often even too open, having too little self-criticism. So.. my sociability may turn against itself, in same way as immune system may turn against itself in allergic reaction. I come too close, and people take step backwards. So, often I try to pretend that I am far, or not taking any steps, just to catch people unguarded.
Despite all my femininity, I remain the hunter, chasing Daphne through the woods, but she is too quick for me, always transforming into Bay Laurel. I try to embrace the branches, but even the branches shrink away from me, Apollo.
Anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa, as they say.
Often I do not understand my type of narcissism. Narcissists are socially manipulative, and confident, I am far cry from it. I feel that my narcissism is born out of necessity. The winters in Finland are long, dark lonely. I´d become crazy here, if I didn't enjoy or respect myself. So I celebrate myself. Very few people seem to understand this. They say I should humble down, play down my ego. I feel there is no ego. It is said, that creative people use the right side of their brains more than the left, I can see this clearly. Even so far as to say, that I am the right cerebral hemisphere. I suppose this is the woman brain. Not the ego.
Maybe I could say, that my ego is a parody of ego, a travesty, joke, and that´s why it upsets so much the more serious egoists, who try to appear humble.
Some of the things I enjoy to think, this summer.. or autumn 2010 are: history of Europe, how we build this western identity on Rome, and Greece, which are dead civilizations. I think we westerners should think this over, and ask ourselves that what is it Persia, or Byzance, that so much repels us. - Yes, it´s the effeminacy. Mahatma Gandhi used to ask why westerners think that ancient Rome and Greece were such great. I wish to ask the same.
As a person, I am quite otherworldly, ethereal, impractical. Often it seems, I don't live in the same physical universe as rest of people. My elitism and aristocratic attitude irritates many. But I can not help it. I am built that way. I just can not think everything through the common man, the statistics, or weakest link in the chain. Instead, I find my gaze is fixed steadily on mountain tops, shining so white there, up in the horizon.
I think, it is possible to find a MTF transwoman in me. There is a woman withing me, wishing to come out, express herself. But in this I wish to follow my own path. I think there has to be spiritual equivalents for castration, SRS and hormone treatment. I just read, that male biology can produce estrogens in natural way; especially this happens in older men, in the so called andropause. The process is called the aromatase. I am interested in analyzing this from medical, and psychological points of views. Basically I am irrational, shady mystic. I accept that there are many parts of me: a normal heterosexual man, feminine man, creative person, neuter intellect, a woman, a transwoman, a lesbian woman, and these part may contradict with each other. You just put everything in a box, and shake, what happens?
I wish to understand myself better, I would like to be able to express myself more clearly, more elegantly, more beautifully. At the moment I am single, but that doesn't bother me too much. When i was younger, I had to be all time with company of people, I just could not be alone for a moment. I lived by the reflection from other people. Like a ghost. I suppose one dream have, is to find a lesbian femme woman, who could love me, understand me as a woman. A couple of years ago I had such relationship, and it seemed to work ok.
I don't so much enjoy dating. I am elitist by my nature, and dislike mixing with the common crowd. I don't also understand why people should seek private happiness, all spiritual teachers have tried to show way from Lakshmi to Mahalakshmi, from atman to brahman, away from the small self to collective self, Adam Kadmon, or the Purusha. Somehow I am a living paradox. I can be quiet, yet I am so full of words. I am shy, yet talkative. I seem to be feminine, but yet I am masculine. I seem to be asexual, or neuter, yet I am a faun, or the priapus, and even though I am hypersexual, I seem to enjoy most time living in sensory deprivation and ascesis. I am spiritual person, but more than religion, I enjoy mythology. I believe in stories. Stories that build the identity, or work as foundation stones; set a pattern. I think we all live a myth of some kind, and mythology just means we can choose the myths we most enjoy from a greater variety.
I am so full of myself. yet one thing I would like to learn more: how to empty myself, how to see other people, how to listen. I admit I have a difficulty in this, but I am learning. I have thought I might have a slight trace of asperger in this, but after meeting with so many aspergers, I had some second thoughts. Perhaps it is just that I have been hurt so much, beginning from early age, that I find it often difficult to be able to trust people, or feel love. In social situation things happen so fast, and we must count on appearances, and my judgement is very poor in this. In a way I am blind. Only after knowing someone for long time; that may be weeks or months, I might catch a glimpse directly to the soul of other person, and this might be even more clear picture, than more socially talented people are able to have. I am just slow, like a whale or an elephant.
Too often it happens, that I sense that the other person is getting an intuition that there´s an eye inside my soul, that begings to see things only too clearly, so she or he backs off, becoming afraid of me, becoming afraid of what might be revealed.. These are my paradoxes. I am too far, yet I am too close. One of my dream is that I could find a person, who is not afraid to be deep scanned like this, and who would be interested in what I see. Hearing the clairvoyant truths. I think it would be beneficial for spiritual growth, even if painful.
Emotion. Which gender is emotion? May be behind the physical, or biological womanhood, stands the emotion, as a ruler, a queen, empress of the hearts.. I wish to become one with her. More fully one.
My paternal genealogy line shows, that my roots come from Russia. That may fit in the picture; the slavic soul - shirokaya dusha - with all it´s strengths and weaknesses.
Ludovico Martelli (1499-1527), wrote about the writing style of Michelangelo.. in this I can relate to, so well..
" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - scrive
Quel che Phebo, Euterpe e'l furor detta,
Et poi quel che egli ha scritto intende apena."
Hoping to find friends here... hope I don't appear too theoretical-intellectual or cultural-civilized..
