Tiny beautiful things

a celebration of smallness

Two months ago, I had a consultation with a speech therapist. At the end of our session — more thorough, compassionate, affirming and attentive than any I’ve had adjacent to the medical field — he handed me a few homework assignments. Various speech exercises, not surprisingly, but also a meditation he explained to me as the “heart lock in method” or “heart math.”

I left his office, determined to give this meditation a try. It was simple enough and could be practiced anywhere, even while sitting at a stoplight, he assured me. All I needed to do was focus on someone or something I love and let those feelings fill my body, then send that with intention out into the world, transmitting it to others. Maybe a person crossing the street, driving a bus, ringing up my groceries or sitting on a park bench.

He explained the “math” of this, how it benefits us as much as it might our unsuspecting benefactors. It had nothing to do with speech, but that was what I liked about this guy: he wasn’t confined to one method of treating someone with dysphoria.

I liked the concept of this meditation, and it wasn’t foreign to me.

But the first time I tried it, I sat and drowned in my own panic. I couldn’t summon a single “loving” feeling. I thought of the places I love in nature. I thought of the squirrels I feed each morning. I thought of my sweetheart, who happens to be my favorite human in the world. I thought of the beavers I visit at the nature preserve I call home. I thought of the friends I adore. I tried, oh how I tried, to drop into some kind of warm feelings of affection. And I could not.

Instead, the void of emotion elicited a tidal wave of panic. I aborted the meditation.

Each time I tried it, the same thing happened. I’m broken, I thought numbly. I can’t even access feelings of love anymore.

. . . . . .

This past week, I was reading through and responding to comments on my “Dear cis friends” post, and I felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long (for me) while. Gentle pressure building behind my eyes, coupled with a tender ache in my chest. It grew slowly as I read peoples’ words, heard their written stories, until warm salty tears slid down my cheeks — and then more came, a rush of worship — and I thought, my goddess, these humans are so beautiful.

I held my hands to my face, as if I could cup the tears and bottle them. As if they were the most precious currency in the world. I laugh-cried in relief, in joy. I’m not broken after all.

The next day, all day, my tears and I were on the verge with each other. I drove between clients, daydreaming about my sweet partner and how damn lucky I am to be loved by them, and the tears were there, relaxing in the corners of my eyes. I chatted with friends and felt the love gathering like a hairball in the back of my throat, thick and hot, making it hard to get words out about how much they meant to me. I opened Substack and cried at all the heartbreak and beauty and terror, all the generous solidarity and persistence bleeding out in words.

In pottery class with a client, I began making signs for the Brooklyn garden. You know, just your run-of-the-mill garden messages.

On Friday night, I drove into NYC, listening to songs on shuffle, feeling a well of emotions when May Erlewine’s voice came on, singing Tiny Beautiful Things. My chest radiated warmth at the thought of each tiny beautiful thing growing in my life right now, in opposition to the ugliness of hate. This, I thought, is exactly where I want my eyes to focus. All the tiny beautiful things. This is the garden I will tend.

The companionship of my ginger feline pal, Saranac, is a tiny beautiful thing. She is not my cat, for the record, but I soak up all my time with her.

Saturday afternoon, my love and I went to a rally for trans visibility at Stonewall, packed into the monument park with a bunch of other trans, nonbinary and gender diverse siblings — and all manner of rainbow cousins and cis allies — insisting we will not stand by silently and allow the T to be erased from history, from our present or from our future.

Resistance rally at Christopher Street Park

I watched and listened as different trans speakers at the mic spoke with passion, voices cracking at times as tears spilled out, and my tears joined them.

I donned a Transexual Menace t-shirt and proudly posed for a picture with a group of other menaces at the rally.

Transexual Menace ~ photo credit: S. Baum. And yours truly, scootched in on the right hand edge, in the cabby hat.

Afterwards, I stood packed into an iconic lesbian bar close to Stonewall, feeling buzzed on the queer joy filling this tiny place. Taking in the lights, the faces, the voices, the many gay accoutrements hanging from the ceiling.

Cubbyhole Bar NYC

The next day, I savored the satisfaction of assembling a new hutch with my love in what will also be my home come a few more months. Between the occasional swear word and reminiscing about the days of ‘yore when furniture came already assembled, listening to Joshua Tree on vinyl, I tucked this moment away in my memory as priceless.

My handsome gentlethem and partner-in-furniture-assembly

We wandered over to Prospect Park, making our way to the partially frozen lake where dozens and dozens of geese, swans, mallards, coots and gulls swam, dove and splashed around. I crouched low and cooed to one particularly winsome ring-billed gull, who stood near the water and tolerated my admiration. My love and I dreamed together about the ways we will care for this place and all the other-than-human beings who call it home.

I thought of the line from Emory Hall’s Photosynthesis of healing:

“This is the question I am always asking myself: ‘what will become of my stories — gardens or graveyards?’ ”

It’s a question I am always asking myself as well. And now, in a country that wants to see our stories, our histories, burned — what will become of mine? How can I plant my stories like seeds and grow them into gardens that will nourish, refresh, heal and beautify the world around me?

I refuse to let my life, my stories, succumb to graveyards and burn piles. I will not allow my eyes to take in so much death, destruction and pillaging that this is all I can see. I am fixing my sights, as best I can (and not in a bypassing-sort-of-way) on what is still alive and how I can water it. This is where I feel I can best serve right now.

May we all find our own versions of gardens of stories, our own tiny beautiful things dotted on the landscape of our days, and bring them more fully to life, even here, in what can feel like the end of days.

Especially here.

your loving Transexual Menace,

Phoenix