Last Friday I hooked up my thirty year old Airstream, picked up a good friend downtown, and headed Southwest towards Astoria Oregon. The purpose was ostensibly to participate with the LGBTQ contingent in a community celebration and parade on Saturday, but my real purpose was to build connections and community. I was travelling to stay with people I know from Susan's and Facebook. I was hoping to find a friend in one of the better authors here, someone whose compassionate nature and selfless activism I have come to admire and cherish.
Every time I have been willing to take risks, to seek out authentic people who believe in themselves and their community I have also found an umbrella of love. This is my story,my experience, my life. There have been years where I shunned the very idea of a connected life. Where to be insular and alone was to be safe. Where darkness and depression were both existential threats, and comforting and secure. I will never again retreat into the cocoon of isolation and a colorless world. I neither need to nor do I want to.
Today I shall wear purple.
Saturday morning I cooked up a breakfast that couldn't be beat, and over coffe and conversation I got to see and walk through the riparian restoration of wetlands; ecological beauty that a small group of people cis and trans, gay and straight were making happen on the Oregon coast. What a gift!
We collected another t-girl, and joined the parade assembly area in sunshine and rainbows. I sang old Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie tunes to the kids, while the adults distributed banners, and we began to walk through the heart of a small coastal fishing and forest products town. As a group we sang to the throngs "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" they applauded, we laughed, we sang and sang until the sound and voices became a mantra. The sun warmed us all.
Later we broke bread, with salmon, sweet corn, scones, conversation, laughter and music. That evening I was given the gift of conversation with my host. She is quite simply one of the truly special people in my life. Yes I have a bit of a crush, but it is tempered by compassion and appreciation. Sunday we went sailing on the Columbia River, climbed towers, met new amazing people.
In a few brief hours I was was embraced into a remarkable community of spirit and in the most profound sense, made a friend. I cannot believe that I have been gifted with friends like this. Thirty months ago I felt lonely, angry, different, and afraid. I loved no-one and felt equally unloved. This morning, I am in the home of a beautiful t-man, at three thirty in the morning, writing an epistle to the universe. I cannot do this.
And that is the point.
I cannot do this, but in community we can! We can change the world one family of people - perhaps one solitary life, at a time. I have become a believer in the power of our collective selves. To be a fulfilled human being I need to touch and to be touched. Both physically and with psychic intensity. It isn't magic, it is community, it is connections. I am engaged in the union of many lives, with many venues. Some purely in prose, some purely in conversation, most a patois of ways of connecting. I am in love with humanity and nothing is impossible.
Fair Winds and Calm Seas,
Julie
