Aimee Herman's Blog, page 43

an ode to the united states postal service

I have recently acquired a sweater with the most beautiful emblem on it, representing all I believe in, celebrate and practice. This blue and white image is like the rainbow I secretly hope to appear in the sky after each warm rainstorm. It is the signifier of hope, patience and art of writing in this country.

It is……….the United States Postal Service mark of dedication.

Beyond writing letters (almost) each day, I find comfort when I spot a curvy, blue mailbox to slip my envelopes inside. It reminds me that I am not only being encouraged to write, but how dedicated these postal workers are, traveling all over to empty these boxes and bring them to the chosen addressee.

I have written 125 letters to one particular human for the past six months. When I mentioned recently to someone that we live nearby and often see each other, they asked: So, what do you write in your letters? What is left to say?

I mentioned that I never plan out my sentences. I write what I see. How I feel in that moment. I write about the pigeon hopping along on three feet with what looks like bed head, staring me down as I eat a pretzel. When I crumble a few bits of it and toss it onto the ground, I write about how it pecks at it, then walks away. Perhaps the pigeon expected it to have more flavor or bite. I write about the panic attack I have on the A train which follows me onto the 4 train. I write about the way in which I abruptly head above ground, toward a farmers market, breathing in the medicinal fume of local vegetables. I write about the man standing above me on a different commute and the envy I feel for his perfectly-fitting suit and how his tie looks crisper than mine. I write that I wish I could afford a tailored suit and how different fabric looks on a body, which it was measured just for.

My postal worker in Boulder, Colorado, where I lived for a few years, was named Rusty. I often greeted him, asking him about his day and thanking him for his dedication to his job.

It’s not easy delivering mail in rain, sleet, or snow. On the coldest days of the year or the hottest.

Postal workers are my heroes. They are thankless publishers, bringing handwriting and languages to worthy recipients.

Yes, they also deliver your bills and bad messages, but if you were to have a pen pal (or several), it makes the junk mail feel less lackluster.

Thank you to all those who go door-t0-door, filling up mailboxes across the world.

And find yourself a pen pal, if you haven’t already.

(I’ve always got room for one or two more!)

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", communicating through letters, letter writing, love of mail, love of USPS, mail, pen pals, United States Postal Service, USPS

chest.

Dear male-presenting human meditating on a wednesday when the sun was at its hottest in union square,

I wasn’t checking you out.

That is to say, I wasn’t looking to get inside your pants which were wide open, zipper down. I wasn’t interested in the way your body would feel pressed against mine. I had no interest in knowing how soft you could be. Or how…hard.

I had no interest in your mouth. Or your long hair whipping into mine. I didn’t care how many indents you had pressed into your abdominals. If your thighs were strong or weak, it did not matter.

I could not care about the color of your eyes or if they caught my stare.

I had no plans on learning whether or not you are a good kisser. Perhaps you have a tongue that can drip a thousand alphabets down my throat. I will never know.

What I could not stop noticing was the skin between your collarbone and bellybutton.

The human who sat beside me said, “I think that’s what your chest would like like.”

would look like…….

I couldn’t stop memorizing the ways in which your chest flattened and curved, shadowed by the sun. I was too far to calculate or memorize the drips of sweat from the heat, but I imagined they were there.

I curled my head downward toward my own chest. It was clothed in button-down shirt, tie, vest. It was flat until I touched it and then, the curve could be felt. The binder. The interruption of how I feel and what remains.

I watched you pray, Male-Presenting-Meditating-Human.

I watched you contemplate peace or life or maybe you were just napping with strict posture. Maybe you were wishing for a different chest……like I was.

Maybe you were wondering what it might be like to look the way you feel inside.

Guess it’s hard to know what you feel inside when all that is seen is your outside….

Guess it’s hard to show what I feel inside when the outside appears so different.

 

 

 

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, chest, gender, genderqueer, NYC, poem, transbody

Performance TONIGHT!

House of Screwball & Three of Cups Presents:
DIVINE: A Theatre and Fortune telling Hideout
Come to The Redroom, located at KGB Bar at 85 E. 4th St. / 3rd Floor / 7:30-10pm / $15 at door
 
What is this?
A tarot trading society event with palm/tarot reading, poetry and live music!!!
 
This month’s card: 
THE FOOL
 
Performances by:
The Fools featuring Michael Wiener and Gavin Price
Fritz Donnelly of HiChristina
(the absolutely captivating) Jane LeCroy
Aimee Herman and Pancetta Bruschetta (the ukelele)
 
Friday, September 12th 7:30 – 10pm

at The Red Room at KGB Bar NYC

85 E. 4th St. 3rd Floor

$15 at the door

$10 in advance (http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/853689)

http://houseofscrewball.com/

http://redroomnyc.com/
 
Tarot Readings by: Anais L’amour and Lynn Sabulski of Tarot Society 
Piano by Mitch Hampton
Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", DIVINE, House of Screwball & Three of Cups, Jane LeCroy, KGB Bar, NYC performance poetry, NYC Poetry, NYC poetry events, Tarot Society, ukelele and poetry

the necessity to connect.

Eyes scroll palms instead of sidewalk cracks and I wonder what would happen if we all spent a day foregoing text messaging and reminded each other that we exist through face contact and voice contact and in-person breaths.

We are forgetting how to connect without the use of electronic devices. We are moved by a human and the first question that often slips out of mouths has grown to: can we be facebook friends?

What happened to: Can we have a cup of coffee sometime and swap stories?

After so many open mics, poetry events and spaces where people share their art, I realize that we so often forget about the importance of in-person contact. By living our lives on computer screens, we are creating another version of ourselves, sometimes very different from the one that exists off-line.

What do we really know about each other. We can certainly learn a lot due to what one posts about themselves. Some feel the need to document their meals; some share links to global issues and world news; some post photographs of themselves taken by themselves; there are those that share poems or slices of their art; there are those that are in search of personal connections albeit through the computer screen.

I wonder what my words say about me.

Key words: gender, sexuality, identity, body, sad, human, love, words, poetry. 

But what version of this is me?

What am I not giving away; what am I holding back?

I know I have typed this before: UNPLUG.

And I know I am saying this not just to you, but to me as well. Ask a stranger (or someone you’ve known the name of for awhile but couldn’t list more than three things about them) for coffee. Reconnect with someone you may be FACEBOOK FRIENDS with but rarely–if ever–speak to.

There was a time none of this existed. And by this, I mean, TECHNOLOGY.

How did we connect before computer screens and text messaging?

Unplug and find out the answer.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Brooklyn poet, connecting, disconnecting, human contact, humans, the negative effects of technology

is this thing on?

Check the heartbeat of your city. Are the traffic lights stuttering? Is there congestion on its street corners? How smooth is its street-flesh? When was the last time it had a full check up?

I’ve got enough calluses on my feet to remind me that I am city-living. I inhale the beautiful soot of new york and get lost. I travel without electronic directional device, so when I turn incorrectly, I ask human beings: Where am I?

Over ten years minus about six months without health insurance and this earth can be quite scary without back-up sometimes. Several people in my life have told me to intentionally get lost: Go without maps and allow yourself to study parts of the wind you weren’t expecting to meet. Three years ago, a beautiful German with the blondest of dreadlocks told me: When you make the wrong turn, it becomes right.

So I turned my maps into paper airplanes and floated onward. Careful of the cracks and and inconsistency of sidewalks, I lifted up each foot so as not to fall. I wanted to see everything and yet feared falling. Suddenly, I realized I was collecting more fears. Choking and getting sick and infections and side-effects and migraines and whooping cough and chicken pox–even though I received it in my youth and it no longer exists.

I still wanted to be aimless and hippie and hunt and exist, yet I worried about the contagion of city.

Now, I am incorporating vocabulary back into my speech such as: HMO, copay and referrals. I am searching for doctors in my plan. Suddenly, I feel like an adult because I have…..health insurance.

I have deeply mixed emotions about this body I live in. I lost the keys a few times and I’ve had to break in. So, there are cracks and creaking floorboards inside me. There are tiny slits where the mice get in. There are drafts and mold, but it seems to be rent stabilized, so here I am.

Suddenly, I feel like I can address this body in ways I have been waiting to. Ready to see some doctors. Ready to articulate my sick. Prepared to get my heart checked.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, body health, gender, health insurance, love, map, poet, queer body, travel

(it can be) difficult to be human [sometimes]

When all else fails, take fourteen hours out of your day to create a manual for making it through a mood. Call up the lover that always mispronounced your favorite word and remind them the importance of expiration dates, clean sheets and the texture of toast. Mediate an argument between humans you never met before but feel the desire to restore. Give your mouth away just for an evening and forget about your allergy to men, moustaches and margarine. In order to make new friends, sometimes you need to pretend you understand how to download or upload and logout immediately. On the second day of Autumn, you will receive an unmarked scab from someone who used to know seventeen things about you; this will be their version of a love letter; do not eat it; or if you do, tell no one of this. Everyday thereafter, this encrusted wound will cause you to mispronounce your favorite word. You will choose silence over speech lessons. The next time you weep will be three years two months and four days from now. It will be attributed to something related to southern women or a misplaced pronoun. Sometimes, to be human can be difficult.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", gender, life, love, manual for living, moody, on being human

then. now. now. then. then.

He asks, “What do you collect?”

I say, “Rituals. Mothers. Loose tea.”

She wants to know why maps coat my walls as though these paper grids were paint.

I say, “I got lost somewhere between sixteen and thirty-two and need to be reminded which directions and roads will lead me back.”

“You must confess how you got your hair that color,” they sing.

I say, “Plasma, sex and rejected genetics.”

He whispers, “Tell me what distracts you away from then.”

“Easy,” I slurp out. “I eat cross-outs. I memorize bloodstains on my mattress. I finger the silence between my gender and my hairstyle—”

“I just don’t understand,” they interrupt. “What does blood and silence and the haunt between your legs have anything to do with—

“Tell me what you think when you look at my knots and curls,” I instruct.

She responds, “Pretty. Feminine. Lucky.”

I tell him that injecting a different box into my body doesn’t have to change the length of my hair.

He asks me, “Do you hunger for happy.”

I say, “I appetite for multiple choice and window panes.”

She tells me that I am too feminine to be called anything other than—

“And what distracts you away from now,” he interrupts.

I tell them, “Naming tomorrow.”

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, conversation with self, gender, genderqueer, hair, love, poetics, poetry, queer body

what is included.

From a recent article in the NY Times magazine featuring Jill Soloway, the writer of  the new Amazon program, “Transparent”, Ian Harvie, a transgender actor was quoted saying: “…We’re all trans. Don’t you see that we’re all trans?”

The writer of the article, Taffy Brodesser-Akner said, “But we aren’t, except in this way: We all struggle to become comfortable in the skin we were born into; we all try to uncover an identity beneath what was assigned to us at birth.”

And here I agree. So much of this life is about remaining. We are encouraged (by some) not to alter. Not to change what has been “given” to us. But so much of it is beyond changing hair color or attire. So much of it comes from a need to feel complete. To unite one’s insides with one’s outsides. And it is painful. And risky. But far better than living inside a construction site that you feel unwelcome in.

Trans is to move into another state or place.

Trans is to transform.

Trans is to translate. To surpass. To transcend.

I think more visibility is what is most important. To ask. To never assume one’s pronoun or gender marker. To allow space for someone to exist between binaries. To give humans space to be inconsistent if that is what permits them to live out loud. More and more movies and television programs with transgender characters and actors and genderqueer humans existing as well, is what we need to further educate those who are unaware or unsure.

There is never going to be just one way to be. There is not one kind of gay person or trans person. Or human.

We (can) exist to educate and inspire one another. So, ask. And respect one another’s vocabularies. It takes some people a lifetime to find their inner dictionaries and understand how to enunciate the body.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, gender, genderqueer, Jill Soloway, poet, queer body, transgender, Transparent

texture of a mushroom

“Who were these kids? What right had they to be born into a world where they were taught to look endlessly into themselves to ask how the texture of a mushroom made them feel? To ask themselves, and not be told, whether they were boys or girls? You eat what’s there or you starve.”
–Kim Fu, “For Today I am a Boy”

After reading the unique and beautifully written book, “For Today I am a Boy”, I found my thoughts stretched in directions I was not expecting. I inhale gender and exhale gender. And inhale. And exhale. I think about procedures and practices. I think about posture and the differences between how I am perceived and how I perceive myself.

I acknowledge the wince I feel in my bones each time I am called Miss or Ma’am. I am trying to exist beyond the borders of pronouns and just walk along as human.

Throughout the book, I recognized the ways in which gender is not always chosen. It can be hidden. It can become shameful. It can become the drawer of unmentionables that becomes like a haunt. The word transgender (as far as I can recall) is never used in this novel. And it doesn’t need to be. It’s aroma is there the entire time. What moved me the most is how community just naturally forms, which shapes our comfort level allowing these drawers to slowly open and let limbs rummage a bit.

For some, gender is not a second thought. It just is. All these options that we have (which are growing) are not necessary for some. For others, it has become like spending a lifetime (or what feels like such) for the right word and finally finding it.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", body, For Today I am a Boy, gender, genderqueer, Kim Fu, mushroom, poem, transgender

Upcoming Creative Writing Workshop. Sign Up NOW!!

Writing Out the Bones of Poetry: Experimental Writing with Aimee Herman



September 13-14, 12pm-2pm

Shetler Studios

244 W 54th St #12, New York, NY 10019

$100.00

SIGN UP

In this two day workshop, we will create experiments on the page through spills, cut-ups (inspired by William S. Burroughs) and various prompts leading us out of conventional language and into hybrid dialects. Where is the urgency of your words? How often do you color outside of the lines with your poetics. We will stretch out the margins and encourage each other to break out of our habits. This class will also offer students the opportunity to practice reading their creations out loud. What is the dialect of your performance? How do you want to be heard? This workshop will include peer discussion and feedback. There will be an optional trip after class on Sunday to Parkside Lounge for great weather for MEDIA’s open mic.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", experimental writing, NYC Creative Writing Workshop, NYC Poetry, NYC writing workshop, poetry, Poetry Teachers NYC, PTNYC, Shetler Studios