A Ballot for The Queer Behind The Mirror [nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards]

The Queer Behind the Mirror has been nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards in 4 categories: Literature/Culture, GLBT, Overall and Personal! The second round of voting has started already and will close on the 12th of Dec. If you want to see The Queer Behind the Mirror make it to the third round, please click here to cast your vote in whichever category you think deserves a vote.

I would like to thank all the readers and bloggers who nominated the blog! Thanks for your support.

I would also like to point out that some of my own favorite blogs have been nominated in various categories. Running along in the GLBT category are Feral Geographer, Gay Persons of Color, Ferry Tales and Driving Fast on Loose Gravel. They deserve your vote too, so please vote for them and please read them! Do check out the other lists of categories too. One of your favorite blogs may just have been nominated. And it's always a good way to discover new blogs and bloggers!

Happy voting and happy reading!

Somewhere Along the Way [free verse]

I think I injured my heart, somewhere along the way
from Kingston to Winnipeg. I don't quite know when.
I remember that shin fracture, twelve years ago
in a dance class. Pain, acute, shrewd, stretching
a rubber-band at the threshold of constriction.

I think I injured my heart, somewhere along the way
from Kingston to Winnipeg. I don't quite know when,
I don't quite know how. It snapped like a violin cord
tensed in a diagonal between my chest and my back:
thin line, contained, faster than the speed in a red car.

I think I tore my heart, somewhere along the way
from Kingston to Winnipeg. I don't quite know when.
Somewhere on the highway we watched the silence
reflect cemeteries and empty branches in the mirror.
Something tore open which wasn't you, which wasn't me.

Here's My Guilty Pleasure [what is yours? and a poem too!]

I have to confess to my guilty pleasure. I have to put it out there. I have to make it real. I have to make it known. In the process, will I purge the pleasure and exonerate the guilt?

If I have to put my guilty pleasure in Freudian terms, it is clearly oral in nature. It's all centered around lips that can lick kiss bite suck suckle push pull pout, around tongue that can circle triangulate lick suck twist caress moist dry harsh soft, around teeth that can bite tear stitch suckle clinch stroke... And then there's the cheek, the palate, the gum, the throat...

(No, this is not a post about blow jobs!)

It's been a few weeks now that my libido seems to have channeled itself into oral pleasures. As a consequence, all I've been doing is eating, eating and eating. I don't think it's got anything to do with giving up smoking, since this oral fixation started weeks ago while I was still a smoker.

So, I've been eating. Not just any kind of eating, but a lot of junk. And not just any junk. In one day, I can manage my normal breakfast lunch diner + two chocolate donuts + four Mars bars + a pack of 150 grams of Doritos + a 200 grams Marble cake. Don't ask me how much calories this comes up to in a day: I stop counting the moment it goes over a 1000 calories. (Abashed! Abashed! Abashed!)

The pleasure is guilty in nature. I often lock myself up in my room with food and I indulge so that nobody can see me as I taste with the palate of an expert and emit orgasmic sounds. At other times, I simply hog in a barbaric way and I squeal like a fat pig.

And like this wasn't enough, instead of daydreaming of cute boys and erotic situations, in libraries, I now very regularly pine for food-orgies. I crave this Greek fantasy of a food-orgy, of eating, of filling myself up, emptying myself by vomiting and then filling myself up again. Aristotle believed that indulgence in eating pleasures (greed, satiation, immediate instinctive satisfaction etc.) was of as base a nature as sexual pleasure that sought immediate satisfaction. This doesn't make me a great human being, does it?

This being said, my sex life went dead over the past few months. You know how people say that "a vibrator can't replace a man?" Well a dear friend of mine often says that "a man can't replace a vibrator!" All I have to say is that a man can't replace food!

So here are two things before I end. I will first of all tag Astreus, Ferry Tales and Feral Geographer in this post. Why don't you three tell us about your guilty pleasure (and then tag some other blogger?) Does tagging work in the blogosphere as well? Let's try and see...

And then, a poem by Mandy Coe. Mandy Coe is a British writer whom you may be familiar with if you listen to the BBC. (Here is the link to her official website.) Mandy Coe wrote this delicious poem called: Go to Bed With a Cheese and Pickle Sandwich.

Go to Bed With a Cheese and Pickle Sandwich

It is life enhancing.
It doesn't chat you up.
You have to make it.

A cheese and pickle sandwich
is never disappointing.
You don't lie there thinking:
Am I too fat?
Too fertile?
Too insecure?

Your thoughts are clear,
your choices simple:
to cut it in half
or not to cut it in half,
how thin to slice the cheese
and where you should place the pickle.

From a cheese and pickle sandwich
you do not expect flowers,
poems and acts of adoration.
You expect what you get:
cheese... and pickle.

You want, you eat,
and afterwards you have eaten.
No lying awake resentful,
listening to it snore.

Safe snacks.
It comes recommended.

Back in the Blogosphere!

[Post from a coffee shop called Coffe/eco in Kingston.]

There's something fancy about being able to start a post with a statement like post from a coffee shop in Kingston! There's something fancy about knowing that I am blogging from a coffee shop, that the coffee shop is in Kingston and that above all, it means that I am typing from a real laptop and not my old broken computer. The bubble-bursting less fancy part is that the laptop is not mine but the Reenozaur's. I borrowed it for the afternoon as I get the chance to breathe a bit after all these past hectic weeks, and I get to sip of hot chocolate (with a twist of sugar-cane juice in it!), lick my lips after taking a sip, I get to look up at the people crossing the road, I get to turn around to check the waiter's ass, and I get to breathe, smile and feel happy to be blogging from a coffee shop in Kingston!

So if you wonder where I've been, I'll immediately burst your bubble by saying that I have run away with no lover and that my life has been fraught with a considerable lack of glamor, and that that the days have been frayed with stories anxious and fattening. [This being said, I did get kidnapped by a lover last week-end and he drove me down to K-town. I'll get to that later!] I had said in this note that November would be a cruel month and a cruel month it was. So let us welcome December with a warm hug!

The past few weeks now stand as a blur and will only be summarized in snippets as follows (yes the snippets include details of how I got kidnapped by a lover):

Perennial anxiety PhD applications More anxiety... Giving up smoking Chewing nicotine gum Eating illegal amounts of chocolate and junk food... Working on the applications Slogging on the applications Tearing my hair off the applications... A paper presented at York University on a panel with Dame Yani Dr Hamilton and Mr Halifax A crazy week And a crazy day at York (but we did it)... Hair growing on my head Hairs growing on my face Oily pimples erect over my skin... More anxiety attacks More Mars bars A big paunch making me fugly... The Sculptor (the one and only) drives down from K-town Lands up at my place Food and wine by the fire place (orgasm!)... More wine by the fire place A foot-rub by the Sculptor (double orgasm!) Followed by a full body massage (multiple orgasms!)... A night of love-making Brunch at the East-City Cafe Drive down to K-town... Three days with the Reenozaur Closing the PhD applications Back in The Village...

Tattooing the Winter in Your Skin [a winter rant of a different kind]

I said the winter has been fantastic this year! The weather is great, the sky is blue most of the days, it's dry cold crisp sunny warm lovable romantic, and it's not snowing yet: what a great feel! And the bestest part is that I am still not wearing long-johns yet-- which basically means that I am still endowed with some degree of sex appeal and market value.

Quite strangely, the major winter challenge this year lies in bodily adjustments to radically different temperatures during different times of the day. I just think that my body is not genetically programed to deal with extremes on a daily basis: It's a gene not tattooed in my tropical skin. I have been doing everything I can to remain healthy this year: I eat kiwis and apples and grapefruits and bananas, I have (almost) three (almost) full (almost) balanced meals (almost) everyday, I sleep (almost) 7 hours (almost) every-night; and I go for walks and I exercise a bit too so that I can keep the almost-dead muscles alive.

On the other hand, if I take one of my lovely breaks of fresh air and blue sky for 10 minutes, the moment I come back inside and and my body starts adjusting to the room temperature, I just doze off! I seem to be taking 4-5 20 minutes naps everyday. It's scary-- my brain goes dead, my body drops like liquid, my bones feel like licorice and I sleep-- be it on a chair, on my bed, on a couch, with my heads on my books... The worse part is that one of the symptoms of my genetic disability expresses itself in a really strange post-sleep (almost) mechanical action: the moment I wake up, I eat either a Mars bar or a Snickers bar. Roughly 4 a day-- each of 50 grams and each of roughly 250 calories.

So what do I do now: do I panic or do I hibernate?

[P.S: It is to be noted that under the demand of certain readers, I have added the Google Followers Gadget to my blog. I don't quite know how it works, since I generally stick to the Google Reader, but if I am not mistaken: if you have a g-mail account, you can just add yourself to the Google Followers gadget on the blog and it will allow you to follow the blog, my posts etc.]

Anxieties and Nicotine Gum [news of The Village]

I haven't been really good with the blogging lately, have I? I guess blogging is like everything else-- it gathers itself up with stillness like the transparent bed of a river, it entices you with the transcendence of glass: like a mirror, it demands that you look at yourself till you turn in a blue flower; and then (sometimes you expect it, sometimes you don't) it just bursts out of its banks in a ebullition of froth that tears the roots of the blue flower apart. You remember the stately pleasure dome that in Xanadu did Kubla Khan decree?

"And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river."

--S. T. Coleridge: Kubla Khan (1797)

[Yes, he may have been speaking of the imagination, be may have been highly intoxicated by opium, as he wrote this wonderful piece, and yet he probably had it right all the way!]

I guess all bloggers face that one month in the year where they need to sink into other things (their own life, the big world out there, other passions, their own thoughts etc.) in such a way that they breathe away from their blog for a few weeks, often in order to whiff life back into the blogosphere later on. In my case, and I had warned you, November happens to be this month: the no or rather very little blogging month. Quite ironically, November is also the month many Canadian bloggers are busy with the National Blog Post Month (link here), where the challenge is to post a blog per day for an entire month! Isn't this the perfect time to eclipse myself, almost unnoticed?!

So here are some news: It's the winter, we crossed the first half of November and there's still no sign of the snow yet (yei! yei! yei!). Actually, to be totally fair, this is probably the best weather we've had in The Village ever since I moved here more than a year ago. It's dry, it's cold, it's crisp, it's still relatively warm (the temperature is still hanging way above zero!), and we get spells of golden light and blue sky for a few hours on a daily basis... It gets gray at times, it gets dark by 4 in the afternoon, but at times, it gets foggy and not too cold and a nice cup of tea and a walk down the trail to the lake is all one needs to feel the thrill of a Wuthering Heights romance!

Other than that, last week was a very stressful and rather depressing week. I won't get into the entire story of the hows, and the whats, and the whens, and the whys-- but all I can say is that even The Village has its ebbs and flows, even The Village is witness to husbands running away with the neighbor, best friends trying to kill each other, court charges that you never wanted to hear about, conflicts here and conflicts there, and sometimes the events (and inhabitants) of The Village drain you down, down, down...

As to this week, it can be summarized as my 'anxiety week.' Indeed, I am closing my PhD applications and it feels surreal and gosh, I feel very nervous. I have been warned by the directors of the 4 programs that I am applying to that they are all expecting more than 125 applications each this year and that they are likely to make just 5 offers. All of them also advised me to apply to as many programs as possible if I really want to get into at least one PhD. Do I look like somebody who's swimming in wealth and/or has the energy to apply to 10 schools or something?

All I can do is prepare myself to hit the wall, and hit it real hard; and as I stand almost dead with anxiety at this threshold waiting for a sign and praying to all the gods of the earth, the sea and the sky; all I can do is convince myself that I am good enough, but that there are 124 x 4 other individuals out there going through the same process out of which 20 will come out with an offer... There are many factors involved here and we cannot deny that most of it comes down to chance by the end of it. (Chance, fucking chance! Like I want my future to be dangling down strings in hands that are not even mine and that "chance" is all it will boil down to!)

On the other hand, however nervousanxious sickwithworry tensedisquieted withcoldfeet I may be, the good news is that I have no cigarettes to smoke it out! Yesyesyes: I have gone off smoking, for good! You must be thinking this is what smokers always say anyway: that they've gone off smoking; particularly in my case when I would stop for 3 months, and then start again for 6 months and then stop again for another 3 months.

Well, this time it's real. I realized that while I always had control over my nicotine intake and that while I always stopped whenever I wanted to stop and/or that I would always cut it down whenever I wanted to cut it down; over the past few months, I became clearly addicted to smoking. Addiction is something I despise, and here I was, unable to resist the temptation of cigarettes on a daily basis.

So last week, I went out there and did a thing I had never done before: I asked for professional help! I went up there, felt very awkward, talked to a counselor and told him that I was addicted to smoking and that I wanted to stop but that I couldn't. So we talked for a few minutes, and then a bright light fell down from the sky, an aura expanded around the white of his doctor's coat, and angels came down singing praises to the lord as this medical messiah took out a box of the Divine Miracle (a.k.a. Nicotine Gum) and gave it to me with prophetic words. I went back home and bought what is now (let's put this in bold) my last pack of cigarette, ever! I smoked it, enjoyed every puff of it and now, here I am clean on Divine Miracle Nicotine Gum!

I do miss smoking, mind you! But when you end up craving for that lit cigarette and your body is screaming tobacco from head to toe, all you need to do is chew on one Nicotine Gum to kill the craving. The moment the craving is gone... It's gone! And I am doing well on the whole: Just two gums per day! I may not be a full-time PhD student next year, but at least I'll be a full-time clean non-smoker!

Navel-Gazing: Is It What Being Queer Is All About?

This article of mine was featured on QueerToday (www.queertoday.com) and I thought I would post it here as well in the hope of getting some comments and reactions.

[What I am about to say in this post may come across as controversial, as unreasonable and probably as anti-queer? Please feel free to disagree with me and let me know what you think. I'd rather stir a debate than keep quiet.]

Navel-gazing, I said: the narcissistic act of always looking at oneself, at staring at ones figure in the mirror and telling oneself: "I am important, I am important and I want the world to turn its gaze on me..." I acknowledge that I am narcissistic in many ways and I acknowledge that we all are. I acknowledge that we are all passionate about certain things; and passion and hard-work are a combo that I respect and highly revere.

There are those who are obsessed with things they do, watch, like, listen to etc. So all they want to talk about is their work, the latest video-game, the last episode of their favorite TV show, Whitney Houston's new album etc. And then there are those who are obsessed with something that is very inherently tied to their identity: their age, their sex, their race etc. Quite obviously, both these categories-- what we are and what we do-- have socio-political implications in their own right.

My interest here is in the second category. It seems rather obvious that one would obsess over part of ones identity particularly when one feels that she/he cannot live this part of her/his identity to the fullest. Thus, if I identify as a transgendered person of color who is restricted and discriminated against on a daily basis through my everyday life (not being allowed to enter a bar), or through the bigger structures that makes one count as a citizen (not being allowed health care unlike other citizens); I would get off my chair, protest, cry, complain, shout, show my disagreement etc.

The two questions I would like to pose here are the following: Is there a limit to this shout of protest and is there a way to voice one's protest (i.e. how is one protest)?

These questions have implications that are inherently tied to the legalization of same-sex marriages in the USA (and more generally, queer activism in the USA.) If I am to be honest, I think I am getting sick and tired of the issue. On a daily basis, I read 20 blog posts on the issue, I receive 10 other mails about it and 2 out of the 5 articles that I read in newspapers deal with the same issue. Okay, granted, we are all still trying to get over No. 1 in Maine and Prop 8 in California. But isn't it high time to get over it and get activated onto other issues that demand attention? How long will we play the blame-game, how long will we continue pointing to the "hypocrite radical right-wings" or the "religious fundamentalists?"

I do grant that the issue of same-sex marriage is one that is close to American citizens who feel discriminated against, but isn't it time to move on and leave things to settle for a couple of years before stirring them against? If Question 1 has been repealed because of the vote of 52.7% of the population and Prop. 8 has been repealed because of the votes of 52% of the population, isn't this good news? Shouldn't we be celebrating that roughly 50% of the population of these states support same-sex marriages and that this figure can only increase with the years to come? Shouldn't this be a victory in itself?

Maybe I don't feel close to the issue because I am one of those third-world persons from an island nobody even knows about (Mauritius, lost in the middle of the Indian ocean-- not South-Asian and not quite African yet-- lost in an ocean of its own), maybe because ultimately I don't care whether same-sex marriage is legalized or not in USA, maybe because we're making something that's ultimately not-so-central to our lives to be our daily wine, bread and discussions? How long does the navel-gazing over the "oh-I'm-so-important-and-I-need-to-have-the-right-to-get-married" discourse continue?

How many people in the USA are aware of the fact that Jamaica now has a "gay eradication day" for example? How many are aware that it was just in July 2009 that consensual same-sex acts were legalized in India? How many people are aware that more than 130 Iraqi gay men are believed to have been killed over the past year because the Iraqi militia has been infiltrating internet gay chat-rooms with the aim of persecuting Iraqi gay men? Isn't the obsession over same-sex marriage in USA a new form of colonialism in itself? (Dare I term it "queer colonialism?") Isn't it time to look out and realize that there is a whole world out there that demands attention too?

And let us forget the rest of the world for a minute: Doesn't North-America still have issues of its own? What about health-care? What about homophobic crimes? What about the rights of trans-people? What about transphobia? What about racism? Does the fact that we now have chatrooms, gaybars, pride-parades all over the country entail that marriage should be the only issue we need to work on? How many of us have actually paid any attention to the amount of discrimination and harassment queer kids still face in high-schools for example? And how many of us actually stopped sipping wine in the comfort of our couches to do something about it?

This now brings me to the second question I had raised earlier: Is there a way of voicing ones protest?? I have a feeling that queer activism is losing all of it's punch and energy as an active term that triggers change and socio-political progress. I always thought being queer meant being active, being a moving agent that questions, that does not take anything for granted, that moves around by distorting things and demanding that they be redressed in skewed ways. At the moment, I feel that what queer activism has been reduced too is a passive process of self-victimization. "Oh we are victims..."; "Oh we are being discriminated against..."; "Oh they are unfair to us..."; So let us just sit here gaze at our own sorry navels and whine and cry and tell ourselves and whomever wants to hear how victimized we are.

I have encountered a lot of youngsters who had such flaky attitudes even here in Canada. Fine, we've been victimized at a point of time (and we probably still are) for various reasons that have to so with gender, class, race etc. But how long do we go on indulging in self-pity? How long will we keep our gaze on ourselves? When do we get out of such self-pity and activate ourselves again?

Wasn't it Freud (or Lacan, I can't remember) who posited that homosexuality is a pathology that can be caused because the small boy fell in love with his own reflection in the mirror as an infant? Isn't this why one of the cliched stereotypes that generally goes around about gay folks is that they are just full of themselves and are concerned with their own image and their own parties and their own pleasures?

If I have a question to conclude it is: When do we stop looking ourselves and when do we start looking out there and doing something concrete about what needs to be changed?

The Signs of Happiness [more-than-just-a-tipsy-post]

Sometimes the signs of happiness show themselves in simple acts:

Getting out of your way when you have so much to do, and attend a lecture by Dame Yani on Laura Mulvey and the gaze, and cinema and Paris Is Burning: One hour and she lectured to 80 students better than many professors you know, and you can't help but feel very proud of her, she being the closest friend you have in The Village... And you can't help but think: What a great career she has ahead of her, and gosh, she sure knows how to give back all she learnt so far...

And then you send out an e-mail to Dame Yani (and her husband), to Mr Halifax and Dr Hamilton and they all respond enthusiastically to your invitation for dinner/drinks like it was of the utmost importance. It was of the utmost importance to me: I hadn't met up with them in weeks. So there it was, after a month with no alcohol at all in your system, a couple of pints of the Wilde Ale (named after Oscar Wilde himself), the best nachos you had since you came back from Mexico, some spring rolls and wonderful company... A night at the Olde Stone, some pseudo-British pub in Peterborough. You come back home slightly tipsy, but tipsy from the fact that your friends here were there to listen to you, to listen to you brag about how proud you felt when Dame Yani lectured, proud that she was your friend and colleague; you feel tipsy because you discussed academic stuff in a non-academic way; you feel tipsy because Mr Halifax sure knows how to make you laugh; you feel tipsy because they all hugged you and hugged you again and said that they care; and you also feel tipsy because you know they are your friends and that you have a life out here with a family with whom you live and with friends who respond immediately to have a beer with you.

And when you think about how, just a year ago, you were trying hard to deal with the cold, to mend your broken-heart, to deal with the pressures of being a grad student... And now, when you see where you are, you cannot help but thank those colleagues who've been more friends than colleagues and read the sure signs of happiness! It still doesn't feel like home here but it sure feels like something special-- and that's thanks to the signs of happiness! :)

Two Notes to the Bloggers (and Readers) Out There

1- National Blog Posting Month:

National Blog Posting Month (link here) started today. Damn, is it too late for this post? I don't think so. In just one line, the challenge is to post a blog-entry every single day throughout the rest of November. Rest assured, I am not doing it, so you won't have to put up with an article by me on a daily basis throughout this month! November will turn out to be cruel month for me and I know my blogging proficiency will decrease over the next two weeks.

However, you should check out the website and also check out the Queer Canada Blogs group that has been created. (link here).If you are more courageous than I am, it could be a great way to connect with people in more significant ways than Fakebooc and dating websites, to feel a sense of community with other bloggers (queer or not) and above all, to challenge yourself into getting into the habit of regular blogging.

2- Canadian Blog Awards Nominations:

The 2009 nomination for the Canadian Blog Awards has started (link here). You have 20 days to nominate some of your favorite blogs and there are many categories. I know quite a few ones I want to nominate myself. So please do nominate your favorite blogs and if you think The Queer Behind the Mirror is worth nominating, I wouldn't mind either! :P

Let's Welcome The Winter! [it's high time!]

Now that we've entered November and that we actually had to wind our clocks up by one hour this morning (at least I had to, since I don't have anything that's electronically or technologically strong enough to do it for me) we might as well officially welcome the winter!

So it's officially winter time: The leaves have all fallen and the trees now lay bare. The hues of orange, red and purple have disappeared and brown branches tanned like cracks in dried earth stick out of the gloomy sky. It's been a week now that the sky is angry and gray... When I was in high school and doing fine arts, my art teacher tried to push me into painting an angry sky in guasch. I was doing too much aquarel it seems and there was too much of the saline floating in my paintings. At the time, I couldn't get what he meant by an 'angry' sky. I guess my metaphorical faculties were just not developed enough at that age to understand the idea of an angry sky and how it was supposed to get translated into a guasch on a canvas. (I went on to work with charcoal after that, so I never really managed to be productive with guasch as a technique.)

It is only now, 8-9 years later that I understand the meaning of an angry sky. The angry sky is the intensity of the grayness that has been looking down on us in The Village. It's the desolateness of the remaining leaves flying around the humid air to the slaps of the angry sky. It is officially gray and dark: The winter is here.

On the other hand, it hasn't snowed yet and the temperature hasn't dropped drastically yet. While we are keeping more or less steady above 10 Degrees (in Celsius), there is a hopeful smell in the air that it may not snow at all till December if we're lucky. But there's also a conflicting smell of expectation in the air. Now that the leaves are all gone, all we can do is wait... Wait till the white finally covers up the gray.

Deep inside me, I am excited about the snow. It's surprising, I know, but I can't help but wait for this sperm from the skies to cover up the lands. There is something soothing about snow flakes, there is something that says "Let me seduce you with my dance," and there is an aesthetic sense that prefers the white to the angry gray.

I think this winter will be a very good one. And I made up my mind: I am staying in The Village this Christmas. With having to get out of the house only twice a week, with having a fire-place down in the basement, with living in a better and warmer house this year, I think this winter ought to be great!