Preface
This week when beginning to write a piece for my LGBTQ Narratives Activist-Writers group, I was in a fog. The prompt was a broad subject, gender, and in fact I had suggested it. It is a topic that interests me. It’s a dynamic subject, it affects perception, language, challenges assumptions, and forces us to adapt to our changing culture, roles and identities. Continue reading
I returned home from the holiday this year thinking about what awaits ahead, by reflecting on what lies behind. I thought of the the line from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. “The past is prologue.” Poetry by T.S. Eliot also comes to mind.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
When I visualize my future as an LGBT senior living in Madison, Wisconsin and aging in place, I imagine residing in a community of like-minded individuals committed to mutual support and fellowship, while we share spaces to congregate, celebrate, recreate and engage in creative collaboration. I would also need a private, personal space — a room of my own —a place to retreat, rest, meditate and write. Continue reading
Next Sunday is the autumnal equinox, the official beginning of fall, when day and night are nearly equal. One can already see the sun’s position in the sky changing and its effect on daylight. Soon too, the leaves will change from their verdant hues to vibrant shades of carmine, crimson, burnt orange, golden yellows and finally tawny browns before they fall to the ground. Continue reading
Ever since I was a child, films, like good books, served as windows to worlds sometimes unfamiliar or far away due to distance in time or space. Movies depicted characters both fictional and historic, unraveled mysteries or documented adventures; they always engaged my emotions and attention. Some films are more familiar and familial, memoirs or morality tales that act like mirrors to my lived experience, or road maps of my internal journey. I prefer non-fiction to fiction. Most fiction, in my view, is simply reality in disguise, employed to protect the innocent and the guilty. As a memoirist I am most interested in the stories we tell and the stories untold about our lives.
Home again; another journey ends. I’m home again and grateful. Yesterday, when I woke up in my new home after making coffee, followed by making my bed (old habits are hard to break), I sat at my desk, looked out my window on the world — or at least my neighborhood — and journaled. I immediately felt comforted by a familiar ritual as I reflected on the days that led to my arrival here. Continue reading