Ergane in Retrograde

In the midst

of everything going on right now... can I just tell you I love Patty Griffin? She makes me feel grounded and secure.

Top joints:

Useless Desires
Top of the World
Mother of God
Standing

So much to do and so little time and not enough earth for any of it.

From Charleston, SC,

Quentin Ergane

posted by Ergane @ 12:40 PM 0 comments

Bo-Red

I have finally broken myself and slept for a long time. Long enough to feel like a completely new person awakened for a living dream of two weeks. I dunno.

Anyway, I am bored. Like painfully bored.

Right now, I like how I am working against myself to make a point. Keep your hands inside the ride, Q, and do what is best for you.

Short trips.

I can't wait for it to be me and Rye... the thought of it makes my soul... exhale.

*sighs* What a weird last two weeks.

posted by Ergane @ 1:28 AM 0 comments

holding

What is this theory of encapsulation or fixation which moves between the recognition of cultural and racial difference and its disavowal, by affixing the unfamilar to something established, in a form that is repetitious and vacillates between delight and fear? It is not analagous to the Freudian fable of fetishism (and disavowal) that circulates with the discourse of colonial power, requiring the articulation of modes of differentiation -- sexual and racial -- as well as different modes of discourse -- psychoanalytic and historical? - Bhabha, 1983: 26 (from the book Fear of the Dark: 'Race', Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema by Lola Young

posted by Ergane @ 1:39 AM 0 comments

Ryan

0604290008
Originally uploaded by kyooverse.

posted by Ergane @ 7:31 AM 0 comments

Letters I probably shouldn't write people even if I really mean them...

Welcome to the other side!

When I met you, I was going through my Return. Now, I am being reminded of my Return because Saturn retrograded to a conjunction with my natal Saturn. I am being sorely reminded that I lack nerve... and so my ritual has been vomiting. Vomiting drawers that have had the same contents for years. Vomiting the recycling. Vomiting the dishes and the floors and the counters. Vomiting and creating order that looks like mess, but I am meeting my every objective head on. Also, I started a cleaning purification tea ritual. And found the name I want to be called, which is the name I am called, but the depth, the emotional meaning of it became clear.

Quentin Demarcus Ergane JohnFranson
Quentin D. Ergane
Quentin the Ergane
Quentin the Air

After my paternal Great Aunt Air.

I washed my hair and am in process of giving it a deep oiling. It was hot, but then it cooled and it feels divine... but I have to wash it off because I suspect it is the sweet orange that is keeping me awake.

I suspect you are largely solitary, but I would like to see if we can really be friends with one another.

Love and Air,

Quentin Ergane

posted by Ergane @ 10:10 AM 0 comments

Scratching the Back

I didn’t tell him his taste in music sucked
because I liked the way confidence
fit around his shoulders
the way it felt to give him confidence
the way he looked at me with eyes
that could hold my gaze – level --
free of suspicion, doubt or worry.

I didn’t tell him I liked him
only when we were flirting
and being witty because I liked
the way I could like him because his heart
was good, and I knew it even if he didn’t.

I didn’t tell him I loved him nor
did I tell him goodbye.
I opened a door and scooted him out
deciding not to say another
Word I didn’t say a word.

Words like, “I know how this will end;
this will end badly,” but ah!
So-called straight boys and their daddy issues
faggots and their love:
This makes the world go ‘round.

--- Quentin JohnFranson

posted by Ergane @ 5:29 PM 1 comments

Let's really talk about language...

Personally, I am not sure what that post about "retarded" in comparison to other words have to do with this community. The only way I can see it as being relevant is within a larger conversation about language.

When I was coming into a progressive consciousness, I liked to interrogate language, too, and use that as a means to feel that I was superior to other people and also to dismiss them. I want to ask that we are very careful...

But what about language?

I am a transgendered person who refuses to use "ze" and "hir" because I think they are stupid -- personally. I am a gay person. I don't feel implicated when people say something is "gay" and yet, I understand why "gay" is used in that manner. What I am trying to get at with these examples is that it is not that people use language that is potentially harmful and anti-progressive but WHY the language is used, what it is getting at.

When someone says that someone or something is "retarded" or "lame" I do not think they are referring to people who are differently able. Do you? Is it the usage that is problematic or the words themselves? Because if it is the word, get over it -- no, really. My argument is not one about words and power, but about words and usage and how you cannot stop people from using language that is potentially harmful: I *wish* I could obliterate the word "nigger" -- I wish no white person would use it evereverever because it can never be right to be, however, I have no control over that. The only "control" I have is not to associate with white people who would use that word or B/black people or people in between... or just people who would use it with the lightness of the word "the".

So, if we are going to think about usage (i.e. what is meant when a word is used), that means we should also consider ways in which we can guard against being simply reactionary and really thinking critically about it -- since words like these are usually used in lieu of something else. I mean, in what ways are we closing our ears to what is being really said and in what ways are we willing to be "ok" with that? Consider: You cannot be progressive if you are not listening to people. You have to know people in order to try and change the world, right (if that is even your goal)... how does policing language make that goal impossible and where do we draw lines between the language of friends, lovers, co-workers, activists?

Do we police language?

How do we police language?

How do we start thinking about language in a manner that gets us beyond "amen-cornering" and starts us really thinking critically about language and the power of words and learning when words mean and when words do not mean.

Take the n-word for example:

As a B/black Southerner, I had to learn when it meant and when it did not mean in order to not get my ass lynched (even social lynching is lynching). Later, I realized the ways in which my subjectivity was compromised and felt in a big bang, and then I returned to a place of listening. I can't create the kind of world I think I would want and I am glad for it because I would rather live in *this* world, you know -- ignorant so-and-sos and all.

How can I know what has to be done if I make it so I cannot listen to other people without dismissing them because they are not using the language I would prefer them to use?

As a person of color, my words are often dismissed and unheard because of who I am, because of what I am not, because I am not white. At 30 years old, I have had a rich life filled with the experiences of this. Dismissed, not heard, not recognized, because of language and the dynamics that go along with language that prescribe what is heard and what is not. However, I am just one person.

Being one person whose first job is to listen deeply and closely to other people (in order to not fall for bullshit... the folks at church always said, "The Devil can quote scripture, too." I allude to this to remind everyone that being able to *speak* the "right" language does not mean being able to internalize it, or own it, or act it, or even sit with it... it means you can convince everyone that you are not "like that" thus setting your own ability to "get free" even further out... ANYONE can use the "right words" -- speak the "right language." We have to have something other than language to determine the space of one's heart.), I know that the majority of people of color go voiceless, dismissed because of language. Look, for pop cultural instance, at Jade from America's Top Model. Sure, she talks out of her ass and creates words in order to perform what has been internalized for her is intelligence, but people act as if they cannot understand her, cannot understand the easily understandable logic of her language. And that's one small and even insignificant example (depending on perspective), but it begins to address the problem of language and the ways in which it is used to privilege those who can use it "correctly" without regard to that person's ultimate goal. Even the Devil can quote scripture.

Can we brainstorm on the ways in which language renders us deaf in the hopes of opening up our ears? Also, comment as you want, but I am not "arguing"/debating -- FYI for the ones of you who need that.

Peacefulness and Light,

Quentin Ergane

posted by Ergane @ 2:58 PM 0 comments

... troubled...

The CDC is pushing for mandatory HIV/AIDS testing.

"Federal health officials say they'd like HIV testing to be as common as a cholesterol check."

The idea is to make those people who have seroconverted and don't know it aware of their status. But, I also think they hope to keep track of who has it and who does not.

I want to think this is a good measure, but I have my issues. Like, why is the CDC willing to do this, but not willing to confront the public on HIV/AIDS stigmatization which has been good and strong since, well, since the early 80's? What happens to the anonymity? the privacy of health conditions? And what about all the wacko nut-jobs who want to quarantine everyone who is positive?

Perhaps my view is a touch unique. After all, before I could start having sex, I was educated about HIV/AIDS, then scared to death when I finally did come out, and have had my life irrevocably changed, altered, by this fucking dis-ease's touch in my sphere... my father, my cousin, friends, even best friends dead at its behest. I watched as protease inhibitors brought people back from the brink of death, literally, like with my mentor. I have even watched HIV become a "chronic manageable illness" as people said it would back in the mid-90's. However, I have also wanted to raze the earth when I considered how quickly my father went and how that went hand-in-hand with the lack of access in B/black communities. I have felt rage at the rising suspicions of the sexualities of B/black men to the point where everyone understands "DL" and even someone like me who has been effectively out since I was 14 has been asked on multiple occasions whether I am on the "DL." There have been books and panic about it, even. Being gay, I get to watch as gay men throw away condoms as if HIV/AIDS has been cured and have been awash in my own sense of negative guilt and...

I would expect that people would stop going to their doctors out of fear. Our government has blocked proper, realistic sex education at every avenue. Abstinence does not fly in a realistic world of teenagers and it sure as fuck doesn't with adults. How do they expect to implement this measure without taking proper stock of the world -- these people really don't live in any reality you and I share.

Part of me wants to applaud because I *do* think knowledge is power, but the greater part of me believes this is a mistake without a vast and intense campaign aimed at educating everyone about sex so they can educate everyone about what measures one can take regarding HIV/AIDS transmission...

I mean... I have CAUGHT Poz men on Craigslist saying they are negative who say they are positive on manhunt, say. There are SCORES of young guys who think they can negotiate risk by putting strict limits on how "old" a person can be in order to have sex, never realizing that the numbers of young gay men who are sero-positive are immense and rising. There are those who are more comfortable thinking that HIV/AIDS affects "them" -- "them B/blacks," "them gays," "them B/black women," "them Latino/as" -- but HIV/AIDS affects us ALL. Connects us ALL in ways that are so simple and profound most people don't even recognize.

Every since HIV/AIDS came on the scene, there have been people who have wanted to separate them from the rest of humanity. (Hence "dis-ease") Does the CDC really think no one will try to make that kind of thinking a reality? And before you go thinking that's a good idea, remember, you could have it, too, and not even fucking know because the incubation period, last I was informed, was 10 years. For ten years you could be carrying this dis-ease and not know it because it has not gone active. This scares me more than I am ever able to admit. Scares me so much that I can't enjoy being told I am negative because, often, it does seem like a matter of time no matter what. People say, "But Quentin, you are with Ryan." And it is true, I *am* with Ryan. But there was a time I was not with Ryan. Time that will haunt me till the day I die. The same with you.

They make it sound so good... and it *does* sound good. It would be nice, for me, if I was tested every time I went in for some upper respiratory thing, but how many doctors would waive testing it for "straight" people? Already, I notice how I am treated differently by different doctors directly related to my race, perceived gender, and sexuality. What makes the CDC think this measure would be fail proof? Doctors are but people and no matter the myths of objectivity and science, being human, they are subjective creatures (and if they are not, they are monsters) and have biases and where bias does not work, heterosexism might.

Also... I find this interesting:

"We need to expand access to HIV testing dramatically by making it a routine part of medical care," said the agency's Dr. Kevin Fenton.

Notice -- he isn't talking care.

What is the use of knowing if no one has a plan -- besides quarantining -- to take care of these people?

Let's not forget, the world is making Africa pay a shit load of money for drugs. (Anyone remember that big ordeal a couple of years ago? It could have found a solution by now and I wouldn't know... but a parallel and justice is a parallel and justice.)

And the thing of it is... had we just socialized medicine...

posted by Ergane @ 7:19 PM 0 comments

Noted, ho.

I went out tonight.

I went out last night.

I am going out tomorrow night.

I forgot that I don't mind being drunk.

And I can still get my shit done.

I am only posting this for memory, to fill it in.

I went out tonight (and have the pictures of this BEYOOtiful guy to prove it at R-Place)

I went out last night (Neighbor's 80's night).

I am going out tomorrow night (Hopefully to Traxx after the Chapel... a little diglossia [reworked from lingustics to look at culture -- melding high and low cultures or in this sense, establishments] for yo ass!).

posted by Ergane @ 5:16 AM 0 comments