January 12 2019 - Friends go on vacation and a bit about justice...

Well I just dropped my friend off at the train station. He’s spending the night in LA and catching an early flight to New Orleans, then on to Biloxi. I like my friend a lot. If you’re reading this my dear then all I can say is “Well I guess it worked, you’re finally reading my blog”.  lol And I didn’t even mention you by name… yet!

What I really want to talk a little about today is the lgbtq+ perspective and transgenders in particular. Of course we have to deal with a fair number of stupid people but I feel many of us go about winning the hearts and minds of the world in all the wrong ways. There will always be people that have the need to belittle others and it makes me angry just like everyone else but I believe the key is not in getting angry at anyone and reacting with anger, that is really counterproductive. Nobody can force anyone to feel or believe anything they don’t want to feel or believe. From my perspective our best bet is to show that we are just like everyone else and rather than anger, show our dignity and our pride – just be our sweet lovable selves being unapologetically me (whoever your me happens to be). People respond to positive people in a far better way than to angry people. Sure, appealing to the worst of humanity will get some on your side but there have been too many times that I’ve heard about people like neo-Nazis doing a complete turnaround just by getting to know a few of the people they used to hate.

Amazing huh…

Think about the really great people like the late Martin Luther King Jr. He didn’t attack hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis, but instead shared his wisdom and humanity. He was a man that had a life of awful oppression but MLK stood up and spoke in terms of “I had a dream…” words that still cause a tingle through my body and bring a tear to my eyes. Or “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that”. Or another “Let no man pull you low enough to hate him”. These words and very many more are so inspiring to me. Of course we all honor him to this day and celebrate his life, sadly, we also recall this great man’s fate - that he was assassinated, but does anyone recall the assassin’s name? And nobody even cares what the guy’s name was or what he supposedly stood for. But we will always remember Martin Luther King Jr.

I want to be more of an ambassador…

I may well be the worst possible person to be reaching out to the so-called “Straight” folks just because I tend to be so weird; then again, perhaps it’s my weirdness that’s my greatest asset. I have a very colorful past and wrote about a little of it in my book This Little Light Of Mine – Jamie. I’ve always walked in very gray areas of life and this has gotten me into a fair amount of tough situations but also has had tremendous rewards. I’ve met incredible people along the way and have done some very interesting things. While it can make for entertaining stories to some, the fact that I talk too much can also get on people’s nerves. I don’t mean to, it’s just my crazy brain at work. I truly believe that we are all meant to get along and can easily accomplish this. This is what great people believe and although I’m not one of the greats, in fact I’m kind of stupid most of the time, I choose to follow this belief and will continue on.

It’s late…

It’s after 4 pm on Saturday. I usually do the bulk of my writing before 9 am but today just slipped by. I think I’ll wrap up now. So from the sweet hippie chick,

Big hugs and blessings always

January 11, 2019 - Can you hear the beating of my oh so amorous heart…

Well I guess it was around a year ago that I spoke a little about love. Now I can finally write about what it’s like to be in love. Yes my little heart has been taken by a great guy. His name’s Kevin and we met through a dating site. I think I mentioned a little about that in my last post. I had a lot of responses but only one caught my attention. When I say caught my attention I mean he’s just knocking me off my feet. Ya’, it’s really like that.

I need to regress a moment for the sake of my friends, please be patient, everyone knows I talk too much – way too much. But this needs more than just a casual mention

But yes, Jamie’s in love…

I have to say this because my close friends know what my attitude has been for some time now. I’ve often been heard to say, “This kitty don’t do well on a leash…” meaning of course I do as I please, I like my wine, weed, and freedom – just like any cat, or should I say, “A chick with trans-feline dysphoria”. I have so many cat like expressions to this little bundle of neurosis I call me. Like any cat I’ve hopped into a few people’s laps and just purred away, but the first ball of string I’d see would make me forget all about that. But also in the mode of a true feline, sometimes one will come along and I have an instant and permanent attachment. Well that’s exactly what happened when I met Kevin. I don’t mean to sound aloof as cats are so often seen. I’m just good inside myself and that was enough. Oh my, how quickly things can change.

Why am I like this? I don’t know. I like to say it’s the hormones but I tend to be kind of weird even without them. Maybe it’s because my poor little head has been banged around too much, I mean after all, I’ve had my head beaten against the hood of a car (by a couple of big bullies), It’s been split open with a brick (that was just another loving abuser), I’ve gone head first into a brick wall after falling down a flight of stairs (my own fault here – I was quite intoxicated), that's just to name a few but enough for now. Perhaps it’s roots go down to that place of my peculiar fascination with death which manifests in my fantasy of standing in complete darkness on the edge of a high tall cliff imagining what the fall would be like - how exciting that last crazy ride would be. Whatever the cause, I know I’m weird but I do like being me so there you have it.

So now, Jamie’s in love…

It’s funny how we can be so content without any expectation of change. Even my roommates (the people that own the house I rent a room in) started asking me why I don’t settle down with someone, why I didn’t even date any more. Well when you’re happy within yourself a couple of things can happen. First you can be very content all alone writing blogs, books, and articles for church newsletters. Another thing that can happen is someone comes along and because you have this inner spiritual happiness you are now ready to open your heart if the right person does happen to come along.

So along comes Kevin…

Perhaps I should apologize for carrying on the way I do, but once again, everyone that knows me will understand that I don’t take apologies lightly. If I apologize for something it’s because I’m sincerely sorry and am going to change whatever I’ve been doing that requires an apology. You see, so many people just apologize to get themselves off the hook somehow. Somehow just saying you’re sorry makes it all okay and the bad behavior continues. I won’t do that. So with that in mind I give no apology for my carrying on here. I’m in love and it feels good.

Well I guess that’s it for today, but please be sure to have a look at our pic below.

And as always, from the spiritual hippie chick...

Big hugs and blessings to all.

January 8, 2019 - I took the red pill, won't you join me...

It’s still raining here in So-Cal and cold too. I can’t believe how my Wisconsin blood has changed. When I first moved here 40 F didn’t seem too bad, now 60 F is very chilly. Still my heart yearns to go back east even with the frigid cold winters. Billy Joel wrote a song a long time ago and sings about having a New York state of mind. I guess that’s how I feel. There’s an entirely different perspective on life on the different coasts – both perspectives are valid and good, but my heart lies in the cities of the east with the buses, trains, and people walking on busy streets with tall buildings. LA just somehow never felt like a real city to me.

But I do have a plan…

Things are finally coming together after a considerable struggle that's been going on for years and I've now been released from the grip of my current location in the dessert. A friend of mine that likes to travel knows some secrets about long term life on the road and has shared much with me. Hopefully within 6 months to a year I’ll be on a course composed of buses, trains and Airbnb to allow me to take a slow meander across this beautiful country called the United States of America – a place where the native people are considered foreign and although nearly everyone is of immigrant decent we call it ‘Our Land’. But I’m not going to rehash all that. I think we all know that story now.

Now I'm telling my story...

‘Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together,’
‘I’ve got some real-estate here in my bag,’
‘So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner pies,’
‘And walked off to look for America.’

Those lines are from an old Simon and Garfunkel song called ‘America’. I suppose it’s always been something of a dream of mine to travel through this country at a sort of hitchhiker’s pace. I’d really prefer a travel companion but it looks like it’s just going to be me. The important thing is picking up our deep inner questions and asking them aloud then searching for the answers. It was kind of the old hippie quest to find America. Translated this really means a journey of self-discovery. In our western world we quickly become enslaved to a way of life that tends to repress individuality. We’re expected to conform to standards as if in the military and to march to a beat of forever supporting an amorphic concept of something called progress and promotion of social norms. It reminds me so much of the Roman society based on a military paradigm of streets and avenues laid out in a grid found nowhere in the natural universe. It’s taken many years but the status quo is changing. I think that’s why I so admire the millennial generation. The millennials seem to be the fruit of my generation’s struggle for social change and equality for all. Actually I think it began with my parents’ generation after seeing the hideous results of war and the stagnation that rises from a repression of different people and each unique culture. Sadly, there are still those that fight this change but in my heart of hearts I believe so much in the words of the great Martin Luther King Jr that state, “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice”.

So we move on through time and space on an unexplained adventure having taken on a quest long ago forgotten. Like in the Hymn Of The Pearl we know there’s something important to do but we have forgotten that mission. Maybe once we all learn to get along and respect all things our collective consciousness will recall that mission and like Neo in The Matrix suddenly reality will become clear. I’ve had a number of experiences on the other side of the veil, some induced by hallucinogens like peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, and their synthetic cousin known as LSD, other experiences have been through many hours in deep meditation. There is so much more to this fascinating thing we so flippantly refer to as ‘life’ than the standard awareness allows. Join me won’t you? Take the red pill. See you down the rabbit hole.

Big hugs and much love always.

January 5, 2019 - Doing my very best and hoping to get back to my writing…

Hi there everyone. I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here on my little place in cyber land. Did anyone miss me? I certainly missed you all. Hopefully this will be the time I get back to writing, something I do so love to do. Or maybe I just like to talk. No matter. It’s so nice to be back.

“Life is what happens when you’re busy doing other things.” Said the late John Lennon

With that thought in mind let me say that life most surely has been happening – my goodness a lot has happened since I last shared thoughts with you all. I can now reach out to so many many more folks through the miracle of 21st century magic and mayhem known as social media. I hope you all enjoy this. In my day to day life some of my friends (exclusively my male friends) insist I talk to much – way too much. My very best friend tells me on a regular basis that he asks only one thing of me and that is to please, “Shut the f**k up!” I honestly thought he was just messing with me until he recently played for me a YouTube video of a comedian in San Francisco. The comedian was complaining about political correctness, and among other things, how it is now wrong to refer to trans women as “Chicks with dicks”. Now he says they’re just “Men that talk too much…”. I suppose I should be offended but it’s funny and so very true so I take no offense. Now I understand what my friends have been putting up with.

Speaking of friends I've recently made a lot of new friends through a trans dating sight. I'd like to just give them a big hello. Of course I'm not going to mention any names since privacy is always a sensitive subject with many. To all the guys calling and texting me, please be patient, it's a busy day and I'm not ignoring you.

Another shout out goes to my old friend Bree and her friend Roman (hope I remembered that right). Hope you all are doing well.

For those of you that were keeping up with my past posts I want to inform you that our mission of ending homelessness through the efforts of some of my fellow congregants and I at church failed. While not a miserable failure we only were able to help a couple of folks - and when I say help, I mean letting them camp on the property for several months then helping them move on. We tried.

My personal mission of providing a safe place for anyone needing the support and comfort of a friend is still in full force. Whoever you may be or whatever your perceived undesirability, you can spend time with me and I’ll give you all the comfort and love that I can, your secrets forever safe, never judging you as long as nobody's being harmed.

In other news, it's starting to rain here. Hope there's no mudslides in the burn areas.

Well hopefully I can maintain a regular posting now. I’m still that sweet hippie chick that believes in peace, love, and justice for all. I do want to share that as well as being that sweet hippie chick I have also been honored by some with the titles, “Tranny Granny” and “GILF or GYLF”. Ooooooo, this old girl still got it!

Thanks for allowing me to share this. Big hugs and blessings to all.

April 17, 2018 - Just A Little Light Conversation Tonight

Good evening everyone. I’m so happy you’ve dropped by. We just finished up with our Community Dinner at my church. I enjoy it so much. We have some incredible folks at this church that give so much. The dinner here is only once or twice per month depending on how things work out, but the folks that join us for the food and socializing say they like ours the best. We set out tables with flowers and chocolates and much of the food comes from our garden which is all organic, non-GMO, and of course picked fresh for the dinner. One of our church members, Timmy, is a very talented performer that entertains with his singing and guitar playing. Oh I love his music, it takes me back to my best memories of warm summer nights in the park on Lake Michigan drinking wine, smoking pot, and making love to the music of people like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Simon And Garfunkle, Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and so on. It was a very special time for me. The world was changing. Equality for all races, genders, and gender expressions was taking root. We’ve come a long way. We still have such a long way to go. I have so much faith in the generation we call millennials, I believe they are going to do great things. I want to tell them to ignore the older generation’s remarks that put them down, this happens with every generation. I also want to apologize for the terrible mess we’ve handed them but they should see what we were given. Like every generation before us we did our best and now it’s their turn. Best of luck kids.

I just got the stats on who’s been dropping in on this blog, well not specific details, just where everyone is from. We have people from the United States, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Poland, Portugal, Canada, France, Australia, and India. I’d really like to hear from you all. What brings you here? What are your countries like? Maybe a little bit about what you’re like as people. Are there any other transgenders visiting? Are you interested in alternative perspectives? I’d really like to know.

Tonight feels like such a very special night. Ellen, the woman that does most of the preparation and organizing for the Community Dinner, gave me a really cool sweater. It’s long, black, and frilly – very retro which is just my style. She also gave me the coolest card on Sunday, it has a picture of a kitten dressed all Hawaiian on the front (Ellen is from Hawaii). Everyone has left and I’m sitting here by myself keeping an eye on things so a few of the local homeless can use our bathrooms. I have 2 bottles of nice red wine just waiting to be sipped but I think I’ll save them for another time. There’s a homeless woman sleeping in the shed on our back patio, Bree is her name and we’ve become good friends. Bree has awful demons that torment her at times without mercy. I do my best to give her a safe place and she has told me that this is the only place she feels secure but I wish I could do more. I’m so sleepy tonight and I’m ready for bed. Just a little longer then it’s off to my little hide-a-way.

Well I’m keeping this one short and sweet. I was so happy to find out that there were so many people from around the world taking an interest in my little place in cyberspace. I really do want the world to see who we as transgender people really are. We’re just like everyone else – so much more than a simple label can begin to describe.

Big hugs, many blessings, and lots of love to all.

April 10, 2018 - Trans Visibility Day

I went to an event celebrating Trans Visibility Day last Saturday in Santa Barbara with my very special and talented friend Celia who spoke and did a musical performance for the show. Celia grew up in India and is what is known as gender fluid since she likes presenting herself as female but has no desire to be anything but the male gender she was born into. Celia has a wife and adult child that know she goes out as female, she is only attracted to women and is quite dedicated to and happy with her wife. I, on the other hand, am what I suppose would be considered the classic text book mtf transgender who sees the external genitals I was born with as a hideous birth defect that I want to remove and preferably get fixed. I like men and have never had children. Everyone has their own way of expressing themselves on the great gender spectrum as it is commonly referred to. I happen to love being trans female even though I find my current parts repulsive – on me that is, but can be very pleasant on someone else. So I often wonder why there is so much shame that many want to impose on being trans. I was created this way and it is very real and natural to me. In my heart of hearts I’m just a sweet little spiritual hippy chick sharing my gifts in the best way I know. Everyone is different, even among trans and all lgbtq+ as well as cis hetero people.

So what’s to be ashamed of?

It’s very sad that many trans are self-loathing but what to me can be even worse are the people we love and care for being ashamed to be associated with us. I can’t begin to tell you the pain in hearing a friend or lover tell me they don’t want anyone to see us together for fear that it will be assumed that a sexual relationship is going on. First of all why should people enjoying each others friendship imply anything at all? But I also have to ask, if being attracted to me on a sexual level is so awful, why do so many find it so arousing? I’m not kinky and need to love and be loved like anyone else. Of course not everyone feels this fear or shame and I have an incredible level of appreciation and respect for those who do accept and stand with us. I love being trans even though I had no say in the matter, the folks that take me for who I am and stand by me do so by choice – they are the heroes in my heart.

But can you imagine, someone actually falling in love with me and wanting to express that love? Oh the depravity of it all! Trans are only here to fulfill kinky sexual fantasies because we are just sick perverts after all.

You know what? My heart can love a much deeper love than you might ever imagine.

I will give my heart to something or someone without hesitation and I’ve certainly cried my share of tears but I have a special way of looking at it. I see my passion and my love as my life’s currency and will risk disappointment or a broken heart with eyes wide open, but there is a condition… I look at the spending of this very valuable treasure as an investment and I do expect a return on my investments. Of course I sometimes win and I sometimes loose, I may receive a heart of gold or I may cry a river of tears but still receive an ocean of love and in the end that makes it all worthwhile and I will continue to take the chance.

So anyhow, the reason behind the Trans Visibility event is to encourage folks to show the world who they are and hopefully become more accepted. I hope that this blog, the pictures I share, and of course my book will in some small way be my contribution to the cause. I love who I am and I hope you all feel the same about yourself.

Big hugs and blessings to all.

April 4, 2018 - I'm Here To Provide A Safe Place For You

Well this may seem a bit of a diversion from my standard thoughts but it is certainly coming from the perspective of the transgender spiritual hippy chick. I've been thinking quite a lot about my life's purpose or mission and have been able to put it into a sort of theme. It's funny that because of my gender expression and preferences I've met quite a lot of people that prefer to keep whatever relationship we may have had with each other a secret. It's sad, you know, that many feel their natural expression of who they are would bring them shame. My sexual preference is attraction to guys and because of the way my brain (and body to some extent) is wired it is considered a heterosexual male/female relationship - especially having been on long term hormone treatment. What I'm getting at, and maybe this is because of all the news about our current president's affairs with hookers and porn stars, what I'm getting at is so many of the secrets I keep make me feel like something of a White House Whore. I do have some very confidential stories but not all are about who I've slept with, many are things that people, especially lovers, have confided in me. To all out there that may be getting nervous, don't worry, your secrets are always safe with me - no matter how we may now feel about each other. I would never break a confidence.

With all that having been said, I believe my life's purpose is...

To provide a safe place where anyone may find shelter without fear of being judged or having demands made upon them.

It's a curious thing to think about, we all go through much the same journey of life that would seem to begin somewhere during gestation, a very safe and comfortable time that we develop and grow, unaware of what is to come. The rather violent experience of birth strikes and we begin another process of growing and learning for some unknown purpose but we define as a life. At some point we all will exit this existence much like we came into it - thrust from a womb we call a body into the mystery of what we call death. Where we came from and where we're going are unknown. We have faith and beliefs but really it is, at this time, a divine mystery to us. What is physical reality? How and why does it seem to exist? What possible purpose could it serve? Perhaps we'll know these things after the next transition into whatever is to come. Perhaps it will be more of a 'Lights Out' and there will be nothing more to experience. We just don't know.

So along the way we share our talents and gifts. Mine is to provide a safe place, an oasis along life's path where you can leave your fears and anxieties behind for a moment and just be who you are. A place where you can say or do things that only you and I will share. This is what I do.

My gosh, the day is just slipping by and I need to go. It was nice to share this moment with you.

Big hugs and blessings to all.