Little blue pills...

Bless wonderful Progynova - the little blue pills that make Jaye's dreams come true...


This picture isn't actually them - it's just some other blue pills which I've put in for illustrative purposes.


Anyway, yeah - I have six weeks left of my first course of HRT (so halfway through) and I think taking the little blue pills for the last six weeks has been definitely one of the best things I've ever done.  I have never been happier.


There have been three main effects so far - firstly the unwanted hair growth has slowed down a little, which is wonderful.  Looking forward to more of that.


Secondly my emotions have all been 'turned up' - that's how it feels anyway.  
I am happier and giggle a lot more - and when I get upset I find I can actually cry and get it out, which I couldn't easily do before.


Of course the most dramatic effect is in the boob area of thing.  After just a couple of weeks I noticed that my previously flat bony chest was starting to jiggle very slightly.  I could even create a nascent cleavage by pulling my 'boobs' together - which I could never do before.


In fact, seeing as I am so underweight, no part of me has ever jiggled before because I have never put weight on like that, so it was a completely new and amazing feeling.


Today I tried on a dress (which I bought) and found I was actually nearly filling the booby bit, on the right hand side anyway.  It's so wonderful !!   I say on the right hand side because the development has been pretty uneven so far - much more on that side.  Apparently that's normal in us pubescent girls (ahem).


Lucy Left is catching up a bit a bit with Ruby Right now anyway.  This could be a new cartoon couldn't it - the adventures of Lucy Left and Ruby Right... ha ha


On some days I can't feel anything happening, although when I'm in the shower I can 'feel' the water on my chest, if you know what I mean.  On other days (like today) I get all kinds of pulling, dragging, tingling achy feelings in my boobs - not necessarily comfortable as such but wonderful to me because I know it's all happening.


It won't be long now and my testosterone will be suppressed and I'll be on DOUBLE the dose of little blue pills - woop!    You know that feeling of excitement when you wake up on Christmas day - well every day is like that for me at the moment.


Hormones are amazing - I've only had 84mg of oestrogen in total in the last six weeks.  You have 500mg of paracetamol in one tablet when you have a headache - that just goes to show how astonishing hormones are.


I think if you know me and see me at work or wherever you probably can't see what I'm talking about as you can't detect much difference through clothing yet - but believe me the change is amazing for me.  It's a miracle.


Yay!!!!!!!!

Jesus...

My family think Jesus is the business.  


They all heard the story of his life and thought, yes, that story was so profound and moving that it must be true - Jesus must be THE SON OF GOD!


I think the story is great too - but I can't extrapolate an actual physical reality from the story, a divine truth created by wanting to believe.  My mum quite openly says she likes believing because it's comforting - but what a strange reason to believe something.  


I would like to believe in reincarnation - I'd like to believe that I was a woman in all my other lives and I will be in all the lives to come.  This life I'm in is a funny episode in which I learn some whacky lesson then get back to a more normal life.  This is a 'What if' life.


Yes, actually I'm going to believe that because I like it.


Because I used to be a Christian too I know and understand all the answers to the obvious questions like what was there before God, why doesn't God just appear and make us all believe in him... yada ya...


Answer question 1 :   God is eternal - a concept we don't understand
Answer question 2 :   Because of freewill


There you go - there's your Alpha course.


As for Jesus - there was a historical figure called Jesus who was crucified under the aegis of the procurator Pontius Pilate.  I'll accept that.  But the son of god?  Nah.


Christians are very keen on saying that we all have to give up our human reasoning and 'feel' with our hearts.  Which is pretty convenient.


There is an enormous construct of sophistic logic which backs all this up - but is it just me?  It is all nonsense isn't it?   How can anyone really believe this ludicrous fairy tale?


I'm not necessarily anti-religion or Christianity.  There is no western culture without Christianity - you can't get away from that.  And religious works of art move me - although I think they're about us rather than God.


Anyway, I don't think God and Jesus and all those guys really like my sort - the different ones.  It seems very important to them that we're all pretty standardised.  So if God created us he ballsed it up a bit really because we all seem to be pretty different.


To be fair, most of my family don't think like that - but the loony Christians who run America certainly do and it's a pretty scary thing.


There's a wonderful joke in The Simpsons where the family watch a Christian film about 'the rapture'.  In this film a man floats by in a river of fire and laments :  'oh why did I CHOOSE to be gay?!'


That captures perfectly the fundamental flaw in the Christian view that we should all be the same - if we're different we're not just doing it to be annoying and disobedient - we can't help it.  And we can't really help not believing either.


Anyway we all know from Jerry Springer - The Opera that Jesus was 'a bit gay' himself.


Whatever - Jesus, as far as we can tell, was a rebel and an outsider and a forgiving, beautiful soul who utilised the power of love, gentleness and questioning.  He was probably a magnificent person.  But that's all he was, guys, sorry.

Bolan...

I listened to Marc Bolan today... the 'essential' collection in fact.  A typical name for a greatest hits collection but for once the word 'essential' has been used accurately.  For me it really is necessary to go back to Bolan and listen to those songs again once in a while.


I remember seeing him for the first time - on a video I used to have of old Glam Rock performances from Top of the Pops.  The song was 'Jeepster' (still one of my favourites) and he was quite an inspiring sight to me.  So pretty, with glitter on his cheekbones and his 'corkscrew' hair.  I was in love.


Of course that was about ten years after he died but the image of him was still vibrant - I suppose it always will be to lonely boys and girls (and those who have yet to make up their mind) out there in suburbia.  Glam is, of course, a very suburban mindset.


Musically he was a genius when he was at his peak - after his rambling folk beginnings and before his slightly bloated tragic end.  He was very innovative with his voice.  Not just the wailing, slightly broken quality but also the other sounds he used to make, the chirrups and clucks and grunts and whoops.  Like in Jeepster - some of the sounds he makes are unbelievably dirty and sexual.  


It still sounds rude - god knows what they made of it at the time.


I also think he was an under-rated guitar player  (he is generally considered among guitarist circles to have been pretty shit).  In fact, his twanging licks and sweet little phrases add a lot to every record.  Less is more - he had good vibrato and he could compose.  Basically, he could wail.


I think he would have achieved more but for his arrogance and refusal to listen to anyone else.  The very qualities which made him successful I suppose - but to have longevity you have to change and work with others.  I always think of Bowie as the obvious comparison point - the tortured artist who would break himself regularly and start again.  Bolan just wanted to be a star.


Dying young helps your career of course - and Bolan mysteriously seemed to see his own early death :  his obsession with cars despite being unable to drive...  he also said he didn't think he would live long.  I also think the lyrics of his (frankly awful) song 'Celebrate Summer' are rather prescient :  'Summer is Heaven in 77...'


And that's exactly where he ended up that year.


Bless Bolan, the big old glam drama queen.  He was fake, he was a poseur.  But that's the glam dream, the teenage dream, the dream all fabulous people have.  To be someone and something else.  Marc represents that aspiration for all of us dreamers.


Stroll on...

jaye thinks...

This is a painting called 'The School of Athens' by Raphael.  That's the artist - not the teenage mutant ninja turtle.  It's all the philosophers of ancient Greece kind of hanging out and philosophising.  You can't really see it here but the two figures in the centre are Plato and Aristotle - Plato is pointing up to the sky because his philosophy was based on the idea of ideal forms, airy-fairy stuff... and Aristotle is pointing at the Earth because he was more grounded, into logic, classification, reality.


I thought of this because I have a philosophical monologue running through my head all the time really.  I'm just always thinking.


What's it all about?  How did I get to be here?   Do I just want attention?  That's what some people think, I know, but I don't think it can be true.  Why do I try to blend in and be ignored as much as possible if I just want attention?


I think some people confuse GETTING attention (not always the good kind) with WANTING attention.  Very different.


I am certainly very interested in things anyway.  I was saying to someone today that the walls of my house are stuffed with books on a wide range of different subjects.  Just above me now there is Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Monty Python, a book about unusual sexual practices, Tintin, Beryl Cook, 1950s advertising, modern art, Edward D Wood Jr...


So it goes on.  I am just very interested in... everything.


Some people are.  Some people just read the odd book, listen to the latest song on the radio, maybe wander dully round an art gallery when they're on holiday.   That's not enough for me.  The right painting or piece of music and I find myself sharply taking in breath, prickly all over, eyes damp with tears...


What makes you passionate?   What makes you grasp and cling to the surface of the world?


And don't say anything unimaginative like 'my family' - no one else can be with you in the moment of revelation.  Just like the moment of death.  


I think Art prepares us for death somehow - because we are not there in the face of it.  But also, somehow, we are more there then ever.  It's strange - the dichotomy between lightness and weight.  Milan Kundera wrote a very good novel about that very thing.  A good writer for thinkers.


Anyway, the monologue crashes on in my mind :  how can we be happy?  Am I happy?  Would I go mad without my personal demons - does chasing Moby Dick keep me sane?   I wonder if Ahab needed Moby Dick, really?  A reason to keep going.  


With my last breath I spit at thee... at least he had breath. 


So what makes you passionate?  What makes you think and think and spiral away?   


Some people live on the surface of life don't they.  They don't carry that little piece of death with them - but I need it.  They look at the painting of a storm and say it's gloomy.  But look at the little glimmer of light behind that cloud... that's everything.  


Now I've let some (just some) of the monologue trip out through my fingers into this blog.  I'll let it continue in its own sweet way - like a river on it's way down to the endless sea of sleep. 


ooooooooooooh

It's a man...

Scary arsed picture of a clown?   Well I just put 'It' into google and this image came back - from the film of the same name, which in turn came from the very long book by Stephen King.  I found this clown pretty scary till I realised it was Tim Curry - then it just seemed camp!


Anyway, yeah.  I got called an 'it' the other day when some girls walked by me.  One said to the other 'it looks like a man'.  And the other one said 'it is'.


Now that's all really horrible - as if it wasn't bad enough to be called a man, it's adding insult to injury to be referred to as an 'it'.


I suppose it's their way of saying they don't know what I am - I've had it before and it's not nice.  You shouldn't call a person an 'it'.


These conversations about what I am are usually engaged in quietly and the the people concerned would probably be mortified if they knew I could hear.  They're just not being quiet enough are they?!   It's partly because they kind of assume someone who is different is going to be too mad to hear - they don't attribute the different person with normal perception, for some reason.


Probably because they don't see the different person as a person at all - just an object.


I am quite into 're-framing the problem' these days - it's something you do in cognitive-behavioural therapy.  Basically it's like Polyanna's 'glad game'...
you just put a positive spin on it.


For instance, I do occasionally get people asking each other what I am (male or female) - but that at least means I've managed to create uncertainty on that point.  And that's with only a gnat's of oestrogen floating around inside me - not enough to make any difference yet.


So I am woman enough to confuse them at least - if not convince them that I am what I feel myself to be.


See, that's re-framing the problem.


I've also found it's helped to publish the things that are shouted at me (or nasty things I've overheard) here on facebook.  It becomes a kind of game - and anyway it's made me realise that most of the time it just doesn't happen.
I will walk around for days at a time with nothing at all being said, and that includes using the ladies loos and changing rooms and stuff, so I must be doing something right!


As far as most people are concerned I am a 'she' - not a 'he', and certainly not an 'it'.