The great and secret show

Okay this post is all about Lucid Dreaming and my experiences with Sleep Paralysis, I decided to do this after Fang mentioned on his blog is interest in Lucid Dreaming and when he asked me in the comment section of his blog about Sleep Paralysis. Now I was going to ask him about it but thought it would be more interesting and I could explain more with a full length blog post.

I cannot in the space of one blog post explain all about Lucid Dreaming but I will simply say it is the act of entering your dreams fully conscious and being able to control them. Many people, such as your humble narrator, experience them with alarming regularity, then others have great trouble entering a “lucid state” altogether.

The first time it happened to me I was not intending to Lucid Dream at all, in fact I did not even know what was happening at all. I shall share this story with you all know; I awoke in my bedroom, feeling hazy and more than a little disorientated, sitting up I looked around, nothing in my bedroom was out of place whatsoever; my wallpaper still the deep shame of blood red, the stone, lion bust above my bed glaring out around the room as a King casting a judgmental eye over his kingdom. My oil lamps either side of my black, ornate bookcase illuminating the works of the Victorian greats. Getting out of bed I feel like I am walking through syrup, my head still muddy with a rush not unlike passion, like I am falling endlessly through silk sheets. Moving over to my book case I pull out a copy of The Divine Pantomime, flicking through the pages it is filled with half-finished sentences, jumbled words and phrases, nothing at all makes sense to me. Exiting my room I catch a glance at the bronze clock above my door it is set to 5 30am but turning around to look out my black curtains I notice it is broad daylight, my watch too is at a different time, 2 45pm. Outside the room my landing is exactly as it always is, suddenly it all makes sense, I am in a dream, I am literally in my own dreamscape. Wondering of all the possibilities that are in front of me, lifting up my hand I start to imagine white hot fire bursting forth from the palms of my hand and to my amazement it appears just like, I feel positively like Prometheus. With another slight gesture of will I am far away and standing alone in a forest, the early morning sun shining through the canopy of trees. Walking in to the distance I can hear and feel the crunch of twigs beneath my feet, the distance sounds of parrots singing in the tree branches, smiling to myself I feel at such peace, alone my solitude, my life in the real world a distant memory, I can just live in this solitary bliss for an eternity. Sadly shortly afterwards I can feel myself being pulled away back to my cold, grey reality.

With these experiences and many others I can see why people would strive for Lucid Dreaming, it is a truly intoxicating experience. Well here are my tips and tricks for gaining a lucid state.

1.       Stay awake for as long as possible, the more tired you are the better, preferably stay awake until around 2-3am.

2.       When you go to sleep, lie on your back *this is very important* and begin to daydream, keep your mind occupied, try everything you can to stay awake and focus upon this daydream.

3.       The secret to Lucid Dreaming is that you stop at the stage of REM sleep before the final one, a part of your brain is still conscious; this is why you can control the dream, because you are conscious, you are you in a dreamworld.

4.       As you drift off keep the dream in your mind and should see actually be in that dream, but able to control it.

Now on to Sleep Paralysis, no one yet knows exactly what causes Sleep Paralysis or even really what it is exactly. But what happens to me is this; I awake, usually in the middle of the night, and can feel my entire body slowly becoming paralyzed, as if someone is filling my veins with ice, I feel cold all over, my body completely immoveable and often stinging with a burning, white hot pain. Sometimes my eyes are open and I can see the room shrouded in darkness, but sometimes, I see the door opening, a tall, thin, black figure approaches, when he reaches the bed I black out and awake in the morning. If I am conscious long enough I feel a pressing down upon my chest, African’s used to call Sleep Paralysis “the witch riding your back” they used to believe that in the night a witch would come to sit upon your chest and cast curses on your soul. Now because many sufferers have had the same experience of seeing tall, thin creatures during episodes of Sleep Paralysis people often believe that it is actually alien abduction. My brother has suffered with it too and has claimed to see these creatures and more than once says before blacking out he saw a great flash of light filling his room!

Well if I ramble on much more I may sound crazy LOL so what are your thoughts upon this? I do hope I have helped Fang or at least provided something interest for him to read.

Constantinople *a short story piece by me*

Awakening slowly with fractured images of muddled dreams still lingering in the back of my mind I lay on the cool grass for a few precious minutes, my eyes closed to the world, keeping the wondrous majesties of my Dreamscape alive.

"I don't want to leave.. Can it not be so that I stay here forever and a day?" Dancing lights of neon colours twirl and prance with boundless abandon behind my eyelids, strikes of purples and gold’s bring light to the darkness as I plead to some unknown force to take me back to my Dreamscape, to my most secret place. My place where I can once more walk in endless grassy fields, sparkling blankets of morning dew protecting nature from the icy touch of a winter’s sun. And yet the bright light of early dawn creates almost a living symphony of Ice Fairies from the morning dew, I stand still for a moment, watching the Fairies dance above daffodils and prance between rose thorns. The soft voices of my most dearest of friends; Barker and Fawn call to me from beneath the Hollow, the sounds of their voices intermingling through the perfume scented air wakes me from my trance.

We walk away from the fields, passing beyond the Hollow and in to the woods beyond, leaving behind the calm, tranquil turquoise skies for an altogether cozier, more personal stage. Walking in between rows of trees I turned my head skyward and saw the branches coiled together in a passionate, almost sexual embrace. They appeared as though desperate to interlock with the opposite trees branches, in the dim light that could shine through the canopy they took upon almost malformed human shapes, my raced with images of amorphous, humanoids engaged in acts of passion, the sunlight illuminating their unholy, concubine acts. Down upon the ground our feet make an odd crescendo of crunching noises, over branches and fallen trees we make our way home, to our “motherland” where our ancestors blood is as much a part of the earth as any legacy of some long lost God, some ruins of an ancient civilization sleeping in the dirt between skeletal remains forever frozen in the throes of death, their final moments preserved below for any voyeur with a shovel to unearth.

Along the way we spoke of many things, oh how we could talk on endlessly whenever chance would have it that we were together at once! We brought the world to rights between us, three friends walking a well-trodden path bringing up subjects ranging from the government of our day, trouble within the upper echelons of the church and this new art just beginning to gain prominence that Barker told me was being dubbed “Romantic” quite a name I thought for a style that sounded to my ears devoid of any heart or love and so self-involved with personal tragedy, an “existential crisis on canvas for public viewing” I decried it. Still I shall see how it fares, but of course when the majority of its creators sound like; pompous, rich boys so busy with pretense and image and the majority of critics are no different than I can imagine it will do quite well.

At noon we had passed beyond the woods and stood upon a cliffs edge looking out over my home, my motherland, my Dreamscape. The City of Constantinople, the city of the living, life teems within every inch of its buildings, corner, markets, libraries and universities. Everywhere you look you shall nothing less than the absolute, purest celebration of the human soul.

I stood perfectly still for a moment, my eyes never wavering from the sight that forever holds pride of place in my heart. Tears started to roll down my cheeks, blood rushed to my head making me appear flushed, I could not no matter how hard I tried contain this emotion within me. This eternal fear that I shall not know whence I can return to my home, when I can walk through her crowded streets, life all around me, people of every race, creed and persuasion singing, filling the air with so many dialects it is positively dizzying. To walk through the market is to see food and wine importing from every country in all the world, you can watch as fearless sailors unload cargo behind stalls, see the venders place foods the likes of which I can imagine the Gods and Goddess’ themselves feast upon at banquets, the air becomes scented with such wondrous smells I could close my eyes and be content to stand there all day. Truly Constantinople is such a perfect place, her embrace around my heart is greater than that of any love, more passionate than any words to be found in a trite poem professing of love, the sight of her temples make me more alive with white heat than the sight of any flesh ever could.

All of this I did not know when I could possibly see again, I prayed silently to whatever God above commanded the power of dreams. Who was it that held the power to send me to sleep forever and carry me to my paradise, a place thousands of years ago, a place my mortal eyes have never seen, but of what importance is that? This world is real to me, that grey, concrete prison never was my reality, I defied it years ago! Here was where I belonged where I could be truly alive.

“Oh please Lord, please take me back to my precious Constantinople” And with that quiet plea I opened my eyes and found myself laying on my backgarden.

I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down

I wasn’t terribly old when I came out the closet, I was about 13-14 when I started coming out to people, as a side note I am not sure anyone ever is “out” in the complete sense. How can anyone be? Growing up every time I met someone they would assume I was straight, we would be getting to know each other and they would ask me some variation upon “so I bet you chase the girls around don’t you?” these days my girlfriend is constantly asked who her boyfriend is, no one ever says “so do you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend?” The point I am trying to make is this; no one will ever be completely out as every time you meet someone your sexuality will come up at some point, even if it isn’t an issue for them it will still come up when you discuss your relationship.

But what about when someone has not come out by their middle age? It was a month or two before I went to college that I had the deep misfortune of meeting someone who was evidently in the closet late in his life. Now I believe that everyone should come out of the closet, the more of his out and proud the better as far as I am concerned but I respect that not everyone has the circumstances where they feel comfortable or even safe coming out. But when you are in the closet one thing you should never ever do is attack those who are out and trying to make life work for them, sadly this man, let’s call him;   “Padre” was my officer after I left the farm I worked at and was tasked with helping me find the course that was right for me.

When I left school they signed me on to a separate who handles young people in “alternative education” until they are sixteen, so in that sense it is not unlike school, and since I was roughly 15 when I left the farm they were still in control of me for a short time. Unfortunately in that short time they had to put me on a course and obviously I would still be on that course when out of their care, their actions would have consequences for far longer than I be their ward.

Naturally I was nervous as to what their decision would be, yes I could protest it but ultimately they could stick me on a course and have done with me. My nervousness was not helped when I met my officer, camp as absolutely anything, the man minced when he walked, now I am not one to stereotype but straight men this effeminate typically understand how they come across and are not homophobic. However he winced as if in pain when he saw me dressed in women’s clothing, right away I knew two things; in the closet and directing homophobia towards others so no one suspects him. I actually noticed my old tutor laugh out the corner of my eye when he tried to hit on a woman….

When I first met Padre, we spoke about why I left the farm and I told him about my difficulties with the younger students mocking me and how I wanted to move on to higher education. He simply told me to dress as a man and don’t I think I look a little bit “weird” wanting to get away from this slimeball as quickly as possible and he said he could not get me in to college before I was 16 but I had to go on to a course now, a year long course that would finish halfway through a college’s academic year, so when it finished I would be doing nothing for over five months until I could apply for college. Not really a thought that made him happy.

I argued with him that surely he could just leave me for a month to apply for college or whatever but he kept saying no, no and I had to do something he put me on. Such as an animal care course. Well actually an animal care course with math’s and English, at a primary level, that’s right I was being made to do maths and English at the level of 12yos.

I was placed in a classroom with people my own age, and some older, who could not even read or write their own name! Don’t get me wrong I’m not being big headed or attacking anyone with dyslexia *my GF suffers with it and its not laughing matter* but I shouldn’t have been there and could not understand why he made this decision. When I quizzed him about it all he said was “well you missed so much school, you are only qualified for this level” *later on I spoke to my college tutor about this and he told me he should have been fired and I could have gone to college at 15 despite my qualifications*

That was not the happiest time of my life, the people I was with were not suffering from any dyslexia or mental illness, they were simply chavs or shall I say “jocks” for any American’s who either didn’t care or had smoked their brains dead. All I could do was adopt a persona, tried to act as hard and crazy as possible so they would not attack me outside lesson. First day I was there some meathead tried to insult me for wearing a skirt and I think my response was “unless you want a kicking from a girl I suggest you back off before I show you how a high heel shoe can be a sex aid.” Now that may sound stupid when read but when you are a six foot-oh my God inches meatbrain with bigger biceps than my head and have that screamed at you by a “boy” in girls clothes who is half your size and size zero skinny the very fact that they dare to do this is gonna make them seem crazy enough you don’t wanna tangle with them. Plus I learned later on his friend fancied me……. Ewww.

I can’t remember how long I lasted in that place but I looked up college application dates one day, found out I had a week or so to apply and went to see Padre.

“I’m leaving the course”

*crosses legs, places hands on knees and looks down at me* “oh and why is this? You can’t just leave the course”

“Well I am, you know as well as I do that I shouldn’t be here, half these people can’t spell their own names and want to play football with my head and the other half are trying to sleep with me! I am sorry but I’m leaving here, you can say what you want about it but at the end of the day you can’t do anything to stop me”

“Well I never, I’ve tried to help you and then you do this, if you leave her I don’t get paid as much, I only get paid by how many I help” *he seriously said this… When he started talking I actually felt bad for him and wondering if I was being overly harsh or something, but he sounded like some sleazy salesman who worked on commission.*

“So you only want to keep me here because you get paid? How can you do something like that? All this time I didn’t’ really have to come here you just didn’t want to lose your paycheck”

With that I stormed off, behind me I heard him mutter something nasty, something directed at my gender. The next day I sent my application off to college, a course that was at the right level for me. The reason this memory sticks so vividly in my mind is that I can’t understand how he could treat me this way, he was clearly struggling to accept himself but why lash out at those who do accept themselves, because at the end of the day gay, straight, BI, trans whatever we all find life difficult sometimes, especially when humans are such a mess from the word go, nothing in our minds fits the right way, we are all trying to accept ourselves in a society that promotes anything but acceptance so why make it harder for those who are born out of a mold and just want to be treated the same?

Maybe you can tell me your thoughts on this in the comments section below, perhaps I am a little innocent minded but it was quite distressing that someone could be so cold.

It is not, a skateboarding logo.......

As I said earlier, well a few posts ago, I am going to stay with my wonderful GF tomorrow and will not be able to get on the internet to update this blog so I am just putting a multitude of updates today and since I have made a few posts about my love of music so thought I would share a song :) that and writing all these posts in one day is tiring, especially since I am hungover :P and I always enjoyed Mark's posts where he would share songs.

Anyway this HIM a band I have loved for many years and seen them live more than once and they are always amazing live. In fact their song "One Last Time" from Razorblade Romance or an extra track on the special edition of that album if you live in the UK for reasons I cannot fathom, is the first song I ever sent my GF.
This song is one of my favourite tracks from my favourite of theirs; Dark Light. Hope you all enjoy it.

Don't start a band, nobody wants to hear, no one understands, DON'T START A BAND!

Ahhh one of the best things about being a teenager is joining a band, isn’t it great? Getting together with your friends in some bedroom or an old garage and plugging in those instruments, torturing some classic rock song  and all of a sudden you are Tim Wheeler or Billy Idol playing to thousands of fans at some outside rock festival. And the next thing you know the neighbors are banging on the walls, but that doesn’t matter, you and your friends are on your way to rock superstardom and nothing will stop you, in fact, one part of a being a rock God (or Goddess in my case) is annoying the uncool masses so the fact you annoyed the neighbors is a sign you are on your way to the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame :D

Being an alternative teen like I was I was of course in a band, several actually but we will get to that soon enough, for years music has dominated my life and all I have ever wanted to do apart from be a writer is to get up on stage night after night and sing my heart out, maybe even give some young kid the same hope my musical heroes have given me. And if some magazine asks me to do a photo-shoot or offer me an award for best debut album well then so be it, the things we have to do for our fans eh? I would gladly suffer the pain of fame and fortune for my art.

Me and Mark both shared the desire to be in a band and so decided to start a band ourselves, I can’t remember what our first band was called, I doubt it was the most intellectual sounding of names and to be honest we never really practiced at all, all we really did was listen to albums from our favorite bands and talk about what we would do differently and how we always be there for our fans and not ignore them and talk of our own personal problems to show that you can escape a situation like we were in. Sure nothing ever really came of those days but they are some of my fondest memories, even if we did sound like we were throwing a guitar down the stairs with me screeching some God-awful catterwail like shrieks, because we were young and had so much time to dream and we were convinced we were going to be music legends. In our youth it seemed so real, like we were really going to make it to the big time, I often miss that feeling that anything is possible.

These days we are still in a band though we are a little more serious about it, Oceans of Sun we are called with lyrics based around video games and our most beloved sci-fi shows and films. I am the lead singer guitarist and Mark handles the keyboards and synths and programes drum loops. We both handle songwriting duties but often I will come up with a concept, present it to Mark and we then bash it out in an extended jam session. Very rarely do we sit down and write a fully formed song or even a partially formed one, we just start out with a bare bones idea and try to flesh it out, which does work pretty well when try to write some kind of early-Alice Cooper Band type psychedelic song. You get a cookie if you know the kind of song I’m referring to here *cough* Unfinished Sweet *cough*

I don’t know how good we are but that’s not the point really, we will probably never get to be famous or even put an album out. When we get together and start playing songs we have wrote ourselves, and get to talking about plans for albums, how we will handle interviews etc It feels like I’m 14 again and with the rest of my life ahead of me to make my dreams a reality and when I’m singing my heart out in front of that mic hearing Mark play the keyboard I can’t help but revert back to that young teen and smile that there will always be a part of me that won’t grow up. A part of my life that won’t change, despite everything else that’s going on in my life, the chaos of my transition I can go to Mark’s house with my guitar and a few beers then just spend an evening with my best friend and act like a young kid again. Also it is really fun to listen to tapes of a jam session you made with a friend while completely blitzed.

Of course not all of our musical endeavors have been so overly serious nature I can remember one time we made a fictional band up, complete with band history and fake names for us; UterThrust we were called and we played what can only be described as “black metal-psychadelic rock-heavy-punk rock” but even worse than the image that conjurs up, believe me we were so desperately trying to be the worst band possible and we made a few profiles on random websites claiming we had been around for years and were some kind of underground sensation thinking people would get the joke.

Especially considering I called myself “Anthony Shagnasty” and that we were working on our new album “Total Fucking Goat Vol 4” we did put out a few songs on the net, that were basically just 5 minutes of me screeching about Lord of the Rings, unnecessary surgery and pointless amputation..

Sadly not everyone shares our sense of humour, and we actually people sending me messages asking for our albums and where they can see us live…. What I think is this; before copious amounts of alcohol were consumed I did have something of a point to all of this. If we paraded ourselves around like we were underground musicians and had been around for years but no one had heard of us could we convince people who like to know of the most obscure bands to tell people they love us and had been our fans all along? It was sort of like a social experiment, the worst kind of pop psychiatry I know but it interested me. Not wanting to believe that anyone could actually enjoy the type of music we made I think I was proved right and people will do anything they can to appear cool and in the know.

What do you think? Are their people so conformist out there they will pretend to like a band named “UterThrust”? Oh and what parts of your childhood do you fondly remember and still every now and again try to recreate?

               

Those damn Christmas songs just won't stop!!! -_-

As much as I had hoped to get this done yesterday Christmas for my family is a rather hectic affair so I had very little time to get this post finished then.

But better late than never, Merry Christmas to all my little minions out in the bloggersphere, hopefully this time next year I will be speaking to minions all over the world, minions who proudly wear my badge and spread my messages far and wide. I see no reason for this to not be true so am working on some kind of mind control device for you to induct your family and friends in to our little family.

Anyhoo future plans for world domination aside I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and spent it with those that you love and cherish. Especially since when I rule the world I shall eliminate Christmas and replace it with a more fitting tribute to me :D

My little self I went with my family to my Uncles as we do every year and had our yearly Christmas meal. It was lovely since sadly we do not get to see the extended family as often as I would like, and me and cousin have been best friends since we were little but you know how life takes you in different directions and you gravitate towards different friendship circles. So Christmas is the one time of year I know for certain I will see her and not speak through text. It is always nicey but when you are with people you haven’t seen in so long and are celebrating such a family orientated holiday I get a little sad thinking how different our lives have become and that it will probably be another year until we are all in the same room again feeling so happy *sighs*

Once we left I finally got a chance to open my new “Frasier” boxset *one of my most favvy shows* and got on my bed, opened a bottle of my Dads absolutely evil homebrew lager, vodka, whiskey *trust me its hard to tell* and settled in bed with my teddies to watch one of the best, and most well written sit-coms ever. It was a lovely night and while I was watching I was texting Mark who I don’t think has yet to be touched by the genius of Frasier J

It was all in all a lovely day, and the family for once was very happy and getting along which in my family is a rare thing indeed. I guess no matter what your views on Christmas are something about the lights, the tacky movies on TV and the songs just get to you and you can’t help but feel all nicey inside.

Sooooo how did you spend your Christmas and once again I do wish this could have gone up yesterday but then again I doubt many people would have been on yesterday anyways.

I can assure you; I have not been to Oxford Town

I know this blog so far has been about my life and my experiences, particularly in my early teens, but today I would like to share the story of how the music of one David Bowie came in to my life. You see since the first moments I had heard but a few chords of "The Man Who Sold The World" when I surfing the internet late one night it completely changed my perspective on music and art. I was 15yo and around this time I was deeply in to "noise rock" the early music of Sonic Youth *basically anything before Daydream Nation and the early EPs and albums of White Zombie *before they became essentially Rob Zombie's backing band* were what turned me on, my philosophy was if it had a discernible tune, melody or seemed to be anything other than an extended jam session with absolutely no focus in mind I hated it and was terribly pretentious to anyone who didn't agree with my opinion. I am not proud now to admit this but this is how I was, for whatever reason, I was an elitist music snob. A very pretty one :P but a snob nonetheless. I suppose I was young and immature, I was a follower of a few alternative bands, not that either of those two bands these days are particularly obscure but back then and in my area they were unheard of. And to someone like me being so unpopular and awkward it gave me some sense of identity, something to cling to that made me feel proud, and I ran with it.

I suppose this post does fit neatly in to the timeline of my life I am attempting to the best of my fleeting abilities as shortly after I left the farm was when my therapy sessions were becoming more frequent and me and my therapist had gotten quite close and he was interested in discussing music with me. To make it easier as he may come up a lot I will call him "The Prof" *epic Back To The Future reference right thar* One day when talking about my gender problems he asked me if I had ever heard of David Bowie, as much as it pained me back then to admit to gaps in my music knowledge I respected him too much to get uppity and confessed I had no idea as to who he was.

He went on to explain he was a rock singer who started in the 1960s but got his big break during the "Glam Rock" explosion that happened in the early 1970s. Right off the bat this did not impress me, any mention of 70s rock and my mind crawled with images of Led Zeppelin and The Who *two bands that despite my best efforts I have never been able to get in to, I respect what they have done but it just doesn't turn me on* we ended up talking for most of the session about Bowie and I was enraptured. He explained how he dressed as flamboyantly as possible, pranced around on stage under the guise of "Ziggy Stardust" singing songs with homosexual themes and defied gender conventions by looking as beautiful as he wanted to. To a young, transgender girl like myself this was amazing! :D I had to get home as quickly as possible and listen to this amazing man. The way The Prof explained him to me made him seem like Bowie was singing to people like me, Hell back then even I had only just learned that their was a word for people like me, ah Hell I had only just learned that more people like me existed. I had visions of being the last of my kind, walking across deserted wastelands dressed in a tattered cloak carrying a sword that I managed to salvage from some ancient tomb filled with murals of my dead race. I also like to envision I have some witty, trash talking side-kick, possibly a small, gold hungry Dwarf who joined me in hopes of gold and adventure. *When I say it like that being Trans sounds epic*

Soooo after that little rambling I did thar I went home and after doing whatever I was up to around that time, I was probably watching Wonderfalls or something *amazing show that only lasted one season sadly, watch it and thank me later* that night I looked up on Bowie and noticed "The Man Who Sold The World" was one of his early singles and being a completest I wanted to hear his earliest possible music. The room instantly filled with distorted, sultry guitar tones followed by this voice, a voice like I had never heard before. Listening to "Noise Rock" all the time vocals were something I had never appreciated all that much, though Thurston Moore is a pretty decent singer IMO, but Bowie's voice resonated with me, it moved something in me. The lyrics were deep and filled with metaphors *and for once I could hear them right off the bat* I closed my eyes and just drifted away to some far off pastoral landscape, a place where you can pass yourself upon the stairs and exchange conversation.

After that fateful night I devoured every piece of information upon David Bowie I could find, I read about his personal life, learned the details of every single one of his albums. Even before I had heard them all I knew who recorded them, when they were recorded and in some instances the particular drugs Bowie was on when making said album. He spoke to me in a way other musicians had not before, yes he was not Trans and probably these days is very, very much straight but he still defied many conventions on gender and something about a straight man singing a song like "Rebel Rebel" or "Hallo Spaceboy" made him seem all the more cool.

Nowadays I own all of his albums and have heard each of them many, many times over and can probably recite the lyrics to all his songs of by heart but they have never lost any impact whatsoever to me. Even my GF when I met her used to refer to me as "that girl who loves Bowie a bit too much" to her family and friends. Back when I was so socially awkward the only thing I knew everything on and was confident talking about was Bowie so I used to talk about him all the time, I guess I just felt that I couldn't be caught out when discussing him. That he was something comfortable to me, like an old friend, I knew no matter what happened I would always have the music of David Bowie to help me. His discography was so diverse so eclectic that he has a song for every mood possible, every experience you can go through just a quick dip in to his albums and you may just find the answer you are looking for.

When I had trouble in love I put on Stationtostation and The Thin White Dukes tortured yet cold, icy and distant croon would be a veritable catharsis to me. When I feel alone and isolated from the world Low gives me a few moments in time where I can be alone in my dreamscape, where the world can go away and me and Bowie can be alone, can just live in our pain and isolation.

That is why I love Bowie, as I write this I am glancing over to my CD rack and his CDs are there waiting for me when I need them most, I must admit I don't listen to his music as much as I used to since my musical tastes have become much more diverse and my CD collection has steadily grown over the years so I try to listen to all my albums and to focus on one band or singer would mean I would never get a chance to listen to all of them. But when I am depressed everyone in my life knows which singer I turn to for advice and musical therapy and that is David Bowie, when you think about it its really quite fortunate, when you see me listening to Bowie you know something is up. 

Its work, all that matters is work....... Well screw you Andy!

First things first I would like to give warm thanks to Mark for whoring me out in his blog yesterday -_- didn't come out right :P and a big hello and hugs to my new followers I will try to update every day or at least other day but since my college course likes to take all my time until I am jittering wreck underneath a pile of criminal law and psychology books *a very cute jittering wreck mind you* I cannot promise that or how long some posts will be as I also have to commute over a hundred miles away to see my GF and don't have great internet access over  -_-

Anyhoo now that’s out the way I'm not terribly certain how long this post will be as it is 4:39am as I write this and I have a bit of ground to cover with this topic and now idea where and how my mind will jump with this one. You see due to my life being for want of a better phrase absolutely-mind numbingly-dear lord no daddy no-awful and a few other things my memory on some events is a little hazy not very consistent so please excuse me dearest readers if I contradict myself at times.

Now when I last left off your humble narrator and heroine had met Mark, left school and I mentioned briefly working on a farm, well that is what I shall discuss today, just a few stories from my time there. I am not going to lie, I am girly, like uber, maddeningly girly. Seriously physical activities to me are going for a spa day and I only ever run during a sale at my favvy shops so you can imagine my horror when I was told that because I was no longer attending school properly I was being sent to work on a FARM!!

Oh and in case you are wondering why they didn't home school me your guess is as good as mine. I went up to get work a few times and all they gave me was a copy of "Of Mice and Men" *great book BTW really enjoyed it* and that’s it, so I read it and waited for course work and got none..... I think my class that year was studying Animal Farm *another great book*

So anyways I was around 14 and sent to a farm. It wasn't that big really because at the time it was still being built and put together, they planned on making it a farm open to the public and few people worked there, mostly due to the fact half the laborers were either volunteers, college students studying animal care and of course, people who got kicked out of school. I soon learned my school had told them that I had been kicked out and was sent there because I was unable to work properly in a classroom. You can imagine the shock on the farmers face when expecting some kind of tough guy prone to violence *they claimed I was* and instead they were greeted with a very long haired, very skinny 14yo boy dressed in a black suit, neatly manicured painted nails, high heels on and smelling of perfume..... You know I looked fierce :P I got asked a lot just why I was there.

Sooooo for the first few months I was put to work cleaning out the pigs, chickens etc Yeah I learned quickly pigs eat anything, like including people! My first day there a pig literally chewed through my spade as I was cleaning out his pen O_O then tried to bite my leg, excuse what I said earlier another time I run is when a walking machine of death comes at me, I swear I saw it breathe fire and heard it speak in Backwards Latin before it came at me. I actually cleared the metal gate only to be greeted by my boss who didn't get why I was so scared, he obviously missed the whole talking Latin, fire breathing bit, but I knew what it really was... Sometimes I night I open my curtains and I can see it, its out there, waiting, DEAR GOD WHY IS IT WAITING!!!

It did take a long time to get them to believe I could handle heavier workloads and bigger responsibilities. In retrospect I can kinda see why they thought I couldn't, especially with the fact I got scared having to feed the dead baby chicks to the birds of prey, but come on! Who wouldn't find that nasty and gross and more than a little bit sad? But eventually they did and I started to enjoy myself a little bit, I look back quite fondly on my time there as after I left school I was a wreck and would have liked nothing more than to spend all day in bed but it got me out and showed me not everyone hates transgender people. It was such a nice surprise, there I was with pretty damn masculine, old fashioned farmers and not one of them batted an eyelid at me, they just didn't care, I could act as girly as I wanted to and dress however I liked and they just accepted me. I enjoyed going there just for the acceptance :) looking back now I learned something important myself, not to judge people, yes I do want people to look at me and see a woman, to not view us as freaks but why do I deserve that if I myself look at all straight people as judgmental or see a certain kind of person and expect them to be ignorant? It’s wrong, just as wrong as people colouring me a certain way and the warmth I was showed there opened my eyes to the fact I was giving people double standards.

Me opening up definitely helped my work and my ability to work in a team. I can remember one week my boss specifically asked for me to work with him building the fence around the entire compound! And the bird Avery that sits rather prettily in the middle of it all me and these two other women built it pretty much from scratch and put it up. As a side note my GFs still doesn't believe I am actually so good at DIY and other thingies :P its always a shock whenever I help him do something like that hehe.

Sadly I was only there for a few years because as much as I loved the atmosphere it really wasn't for me. I believe that certain things come along when we need them but are never intended to stay with us for very long, it built my confidence up and I learned some pretty good DIY skills and I learned a valuable life lesson to boot. Not bad for two years don't ya think? But I knew that I wasn't a physical girl and I should get outta there and go to college, so that’s what I did!  I did for a short time do a bit of an animal carer course since I get really good at the work but it came so naturally to me I never felt challenged and that’s no, above all else I get bored if I am not being challenged and made to work to the best of my abilities. Also as the farm got bigger and bigger and more people started working there a lot of kids who had been kicked out of school were sent there and the atmosphere became less friendly and the close knit group we had going on was wrecked. Sad really. To see a bunch of kids disrespecting a really nice place we worked hard to build, but we couldn't do anything since the farm was getting money for these brats and we didn't have the power to give em the boot. The worst thing is that towards the end of my time there I was classed as a "senior worker" and had to train up these kids, they didn't take too kindly to be told what to do by a "guy" in women’s clothing who was only a few years older than they were........ But we don't need to go in to that.  

So yeah just a bit from my time as a good old fashioned farmer :D not all the memories from that time are good but every now and then I do look back and feel a bit misty eyed, I made some nice friends there and really grew up as a person. But sadly around that time I lost touch with Mark, we tried our best to keep in contact with each other but he was going through his own rubbish and while I was maturing and getting somewhere, slowly but surely, my mental state was deteriorating quite rapidly and some pretty damn dark times were ahead on the horizon. It wasn't as easy as I thought for me to get in to college but that’s for another time I think :)

PS: Since my schedule is a little odd most of the time and I'm going to be staying with my GF in a few days I will try my hardest to write a bunch of posts and put them over the next few days so expect a fair amount of posts coming up :P and read em all at once if you can't get enough of my awesomness or like, you know, don't....... And pretend they are being put up once a day... I'm kinda tired and rambling....

How the real fellowship got started!

Since I am on Christmas break from college which basically means I am sitting around doing very little apart from trying not end up like a popsicle I have very little to write about what with this blog being about my life. So I thought I would write about my teens and how I ended up going from a rosy cheeked, starry eyed child in to a jaded 22yr old with an unhealthy love of Darren Hayes *he is amazing!* and a collection of stuffed I try to send out in to the night to do my bidding :P

In my last post I spoke a little about how things were going for me at home during my early teens, in a nut shell they were not going terribly in my favor. Well school was something else entirely.

To describe my school it looked like the Bastille….. If it was constantly shrouded in darkness, during a heavy storm, the clanking of chains and children’s emanating from it night and day while some mad baron sits atop a throne of skulls, playing with his curly moustache and flicking pennies at poor people. I didn’t have a good time at school.

My school days were mostly spent trying to avoid PE as much as humanly possible as not only was being called a boy humiliating enough most sports we were taught appeared to be nothing more than a simple game of “Cause Jessica As Much Bodily Harm As Possible” all the while spouting homophobic insults at me…  Apparently they are working on making this an Olympic sport. When that wasn’t happening I sat to the back of the room, of course being awesome, but just keeping my head down and listening to music on my headphones. Needless to say the constant fear of being jumped mean’t I didn’t pay much attention to my work, not that the staff understood how I was getting A* grades constantly….

However despite all this one day, lets say in summer because it sounds much nicer, I met a guy who I didn’t know was gonna be the best friend I ever made J

It was in textiles class which to me was simply a chance for me to catch up on what the backs of my eye lids looked like since no one ever asked me to do anything in that class as it only resulted in them wasting materials. Sucked at it then and I suck at it now.  Well that day most people were not working since they all knew a new kid was joining our class, it was such a small school in a small area that this was reason enough for people to be excited. The teacher up front was rubbing her palms together at the thought of another slave to toil in the mines.

Boy was she wrong, suddenly the slow, funkeh jams of Prince’s song “When Doves Cry” filled the air and with an almighty crash a demi God pimp walked in to the room, his long, fur coat being carried by two half naked babes behind him. Walking up to the front of the class he merely tipped his hat and made note of all the girls in the class he planned on adding to his harem, I remember thinking how anyone can pimp walk on 2 foot platform shoes and how the goldfish stay alive, must be the magic of his funk I thought.  Anyways he sat down, clicked his fingers and his ladies poured him a glass of coke in his gold, crunk cup *cool kids don’t drink underage says Aunty Jessica* taking a sip with one hand while weightlifting with a dumb bell the size of an Elephants doodle in the other the girls, and a few guys, stared in a awe at his 12 pac O_O

Actually what really happened was Mark walked in the room, sat down and a few of the popular kids sat talking to him and I thought he was a git…. You see that sounds harsh but I was sat at the back of the class and couldn’t hear what was said, also a few days before I had been walking home when a group of older cornered me and beat me up pretty badly because they thought I was gay. Now for any child being beaten up is a horrific ordeal and I do not want to make out my past is worse than anyone elses but as I blocked their punches and kicks with my face, a brilliant idea, one of my best actually, knowing I was a girl and being nervous around boys as it was due to my dad, yeah it was frightening. So anyone so seemingly accepted by the popular guys was to me, a git and part of the problem. Hey kids are very clickey you know :P

In actual fact Mark was having a pretty bad day himself.  But I think he wrote about that on his blog and Jessica be all about the OC.

Now during that lesson we had to thread a sowing machine and then stitch some denim together, me I moved over to my sowing machine, got out some vintage copies of some game magizines and started reading on Final Fantasy VII and how it looked to be a pretty cool game and the pre-release was getting to fever pitch. Then for reasons I cannot possibly fathom Mark told our tutor that he was pretty damn adept at sowing and threading machines so she told him to show me how to do it. Well, he tried and did about as well as Uwe Boll does at making films…. Then, gave up, yeah he always was this motivated.

After that he passed a few comments on my magazines and asked if he could look through one, being impressed by people with as much motivation towards textiles as myself I gave him one and we got talking about games. Sadly it quickly became apparent he was doing about as well in the popularity stakes as I was, or fortunately since we become awesome friends J I proceded to give him a git by git tour of our year and who its best he stays away from and who will more than likely call him gay since they are closeted *I wasn’t wrong according to some other friends, one who was at one of theirs weddings* and the rest is I guess nerd history.

I wish I could say having a friend made school easier for me but it didn’t, problems at home and at school meant I quite quickly had a breakdown and towards the end of year 8 Mark was having a fair bit of time off himself and I was getting jumped the majority of the time. Seriously even the nerds were more popular than us O_O but at least I had someone to listen to tunes with, I was telling my GF last week actually how due to our dress sense and attitude everyone thought we were hardcore goths and used to make fun of us for listening depressing music in class when a lot of the time we were listening to Savage Garden and Meat Loaf :P It was pretty cool, we were unpopular but we rocked it so damn hard :D were unpopular with style. Eventually it all got too much so my mum rang up school and told them I would not returning to school and I had to wait until I was 16 to go to college. So for a few years I worked on a farm, basically as a slave since I wasn’t getting paid, during this time I started defying my parents and wearing girls clothes, trust me cleaning out a pig pen in high heels is HARD!  And the school sent in to intensive psychotherapy for unusual social withdrawal……. *facepalm*

But me and Mark still kept in touch, I used to walk up to the school at dinner time to chill with him and listen to some tunes and whenever I could stayed over at house. Watching him play Jedi Knight II was always epic. So yeah, I wish it had gone easier but had I not gone through all that I wouldn’t have met such an awesome friend as Mark, and the world would be robbed of one epic Meat Loaf tribute band in the form of Malt Loaf :D and as soon as I figure if me being in a lesbian marriage means I have a best man, maid of honour or something else entirely I will ask Mark to do that…. I don’t know I will probably make up a position for him to have :P something which means he has to beatbox me a speech :)

Antartica starts here...........

As I stated in my first post I am a MTF Transgender, and a damn awesome one at that, and as I am a sucker for clichés I thought why not share with you all, my millions of devoted minions my "coming out" story, well more to the point my first failed attempt at coming out.

I believe I was round about 12-13 when I first tried to tell my parents I was Transgender, I can remember feeling rather upset and staring in the mirror when I said to my mother "do you ever feel you do not know who the parent staring back at you is?" Yes coming from someone my age that may have sounded quite odd but believe me the signs were always there that I was not comfortable in my gender role. Even if you do not know much about Gender Dysphoria to hear your child say that you would take an interest but my mother merely laughed it off and told me to stop being so silly.....

Around this time I had started growing my hair long and let’s just say my mannerisms were becoming increasingly feminine. Which seemed to have spurred my dad on to try to get my interests to more "male activates" such as football. He stopped this when he got tired of calling me a girl when I flinched because he kicked the ball near me, he always said that like it truly pained him :P sometimes I expected him to double over in pain. Still ever the perseverant type he tried to get me in to cars, it went about as well. He also seemed to tease me about my long hair in an attempt to get me to cut it, it did impress me to be honest how he seemed to have an endless amount of jokes about my long hair. I personally believe he stayed up at night with a notepad and pen coming up with as many as possible for the next day. It got to the point where he had had enough and simply bought a razor and told me I had no choice but to have a haircut, I don't want to go in to detail but yes I cried. Whenever I tell people that they don't seem to understand why it hurt me so much, but I always say if you had a 12yo daughter and you shaved her hair off, and I golden curls, so beautiful :) how would she feel? Ugly, boyish etc Yes I think that would make her cry. I would like to state here that I do not believe in stereotypes this is just who I am and I told this story because the more girly I acted the more my parents pushed in to my perceived gender role.

Despite all this I knew that I had to tell them at some point and like any young child I believed my parents would be there for me and would want to help me through my transition. Kinda wrong there to tell you the truth.... I know everything had pointed to them doing the exact opposite but I am sickeningly optimistic.

So one day I sat them down and just mentioned a few things about Transgender people, ignoring the fact my dad continued to make jokes about them I told them calmly and clearly I am transgender.

"So you fancy men then do you?" was my father’s first response.

"No I like girls"

"But how can you? You just said you wanna be a girl!"

"You do know that some girls do in fact date girls right? And I don’t want to be a girl, I am a girl!" Probably should have pushed it a little lighter here but saying “I WANT to be a girl” always irks me.

"This doesn't make any sense at all, your talking rubbish and I think it’s time we take you to see a therapist, we always knew it would have to happen one day"

And that was that. I tried to argue it but all I get were threats of being taken out of school, took to the doctors, the usual groundings etc If I didn't stop talking nonsense. To this day I wish I had argued it further but when you are that young it seems impossible to stand up to your parents, at least it did to me. I was bullied at school, had other home problems so to fight my corner further would probably not have been the healthiest strategy. But they did send me to a therapist and I have to say he did become a very dear friend of mine, we still speak every once in a while now when he is free, sadly he is quite tricky to get a hold of, but what’s time and distance between friends? To me a friend is a friend no matter how long it’s been since you have spoken and it always seems like yesterday you last saw each other when you meet up. Not related to this story but I wanted to end on a happier note :)

Always hiding the fact I have ever so little to say that is of real worth

While I work on my second full post of my pink, fluffy and ever so moist blog I thought to help get the ball rolling I shall do a top ten list of random facts about your ever so lovely hostess, and who doesn't love pointless top ten lists?

Soooooo here we gooo!!!!!

1. I have what some might term an unhealthy fixation on Darren Hayes, seriously, ask Rambling Person :P

2. I have completed Max Payne a total of 19 times and Max Payne 2 17 times :D

3. I have a tattoo of the Umbrella Corp logo from Resident Evil on my left wrist and despite how much the series sucks at this point I am still proud of it

4. Whenever I or someone else tells a joke I can't help but play a little laugh track in my head like in American sit-coms and have always maintaned life would be much more fun it had a movie soundtrack. I also get tempted to wave to the studio audience when I walk in a room and feel sad no one cheers for me when I enter a room

5. My personal heroes are; Oscar Wilde, HP Lovecraft, Emilie Autumn and Danny Elfman *more for his work with Oingo Boingo*

6. My all time favourite book is Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and quite often like to hold my own little "mad teaparties" with my GF and teddies. It took my GF a long time to get what I mean't when I congralutated her on her "unbirthday"

7. My all time favourite album is "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" by Elton John though it is closely followed by "Make Them Die Slowly" by White Zombie.

8. I have recurring dreams of being an orange rolling through the woods at dawn, I cannot help but see this as proof that I shall one day be Queen of all oranges....

9. My favourite TV show next to Twin Peaks is Will & Grace and wish my life to be more like a sit-com

10. My best friend is the Rambling Person despite the fact he never, ever takes my advice, his life would be so much better if he did.......

So yeah ten facts about me!!! Don't you feel much more enriched having read this?

I am nothing more than some beautiful poses really

It has been my general experience that most expectant parents put upon their child a wealth of expectations before even granting the poor little tyke a name or knowing of its gender. Visions of tall, strong, handsome footballers excelling just as much at academics as they do at sports, girls flocking around their child hoping to be noticed by them, giggling uncontrollably at even his unfunniest of jokes. The other guys inviting him to endless parties, because obviously his presence will guarantee the attendance of the prettiest girls at school.

Or on the other end of the spectrum a beautiful, blonde haired princess, the picture of feminine graces. Oh yes all the boys love her and she has an army of mini clones following her fashion to the letter and her mother’s gaze upon this perfect angel in envy that their daughters just cannot match up to her.

Yeah their child’s endless successes and popularity is going to be a true testament to their skills as a parent, worth as a human being and these expectations are totally in no way their desire to live vicariously and a reflection of their own dashed hopes and failures. Nope, certainly not, nada!

Of course things don't always work out like this, do they? Parents can have the highest hopes possible for said sprogs, and they can you know, actually do some real parenting to boot but the kid will surprise you in more ways than you can count. Hell, you might actually be holding a beautiful baby boy in your arms only to later on wonder why he doesn't want to play with Action Man but instead plays with Barbie dolls and why all the girls thinks he’s the sweetest guy out there but just don't want to date him for "unspecified reasons" not to mention the time you caught him wearing your high heels trying to recreate Madonna's "Blonde Ambition" tour.............

Yeppy Mr and Mrs Smith you got yourself a bona fide Transgender child there; how are those expectations now?

Obviously I am speaking from experience here, Madonna DID use to be really good I don't care what anyone says..... Either way my parents hopes for me were more than a little dashed when I came out to them more than a few years ago now and this blog is a way for me to chronicle my life, relationships, college etc A lot has changed in my life since those early years trying desperately to be "one of the guys" and hide who I am from my family and friends. I am 22 years old now *I prefer the term post teenager* and am currently trying to work my way through college to get to Uni after having a few setbacks along the way, am in a four year relationship with the most beautiful girl in the world *we shall call her H for this blog* and generally trying to get my family to understand my situation and to get my Dad to understand that as a girl I do not like the terms "chap," "lad" or "mate".

So yeah, its more than a little bit complicated for me these days and things are moving waaayyyy too quickly for a small town girl to cope with so this blog will hopefully help me get my head straight.