Cranes In The Sky

"I am no longer accepting the things I can not change;

I am changing the things I can not accept."

- Angela Davis

(Art by Mike Paget 2020)

TW: mentions of suicide ideations/attempts,

domestic/detailed sexual violence, and survival sex work

I remember first listening and falling in love with the song: "Cranes In The Sky" by Solange, thinking she was actually singing about birds in the sky, as cranes in East Asian culture symbolizes longevity, peace, harmony and/or grace depending on which historic interpretations. A specific Japanese tradition is to fold a thousand paper cranes for a great wish or blessing... And when Solange was interviewed by her sister Beyonce, she revealed that it was actually "the only song on the album that [she] wrote independently of the record, and it was a really rough time." Solange explained: "You see the world through the lens of how you identify and have been identified at that time. So I really had to take a look at myself, outside of being a mother and a wife, and internalize all of these emotions that I had been feeling through that transition. I was working through a lot of challenges at every angle of my life, and a lot of self-doubt, a lot of pity-partying. And I think every woman in her twenties has been there—where it feels like no matter what you are doing to fight through the thing that is holding you back, nothing can fill that void [...] I remember looking up and seeing all of these cranes in the sky. They were so heavy and such an eyesore, and not what I identified with peace and refuge. I remember thinking of it as an analogy for my transition—this idea of building up, up, up that was going on in our country at the time, all of this excessive building, and not really dealing with what was in front of us. And we all know how that ended. That crashed and burned. It was a catastrophe. And that line came to me because it felt so indicative of what was going on in my life as well. And, eight years later, it’s really interesting that now, here we are again, not seeing what’s happening in our country, not wanting to put into perspective all of these ugly things that are staring us in the face" (2017)...

"I tried to keep myself busy

I ran around circles

Think I made myself dizzy

I slept it away, I sexed it away

I read it away..." (Solange)

And I'm still alive, somehow. I feel shame breaking a promise - a sick bet with myself/the world: Saying I would leave this Earth if I'm raped the 3rd time is not only cruel but possibly dishonouring to many trauma survivors. Though I have to forgive myself for starting to write that in poetry after being attacked for the 2nd time, because it was a hard grief to process at the time... After years of being tokenized for "educational" diversity (since 16), and 2 years after being laboured by different organizations where I have been consistently the only trans person working, especially while still a marginalized student and violently targeted already on campus/in community, I found myself raped by a possible client in my own room. Back then in a basement in Scarborough, that summer was my first time doing survival sex work, and perhaps it hit harder because I thought it was my fault... My first time raped was by a possible hookup, who called me an uber then changed the location to nowhere discussed, somewhere dark, probably a park I didn't know at the time. I remembered his username/nickname on Bumble was "Happy", he waited until the uber drove away with us walking into a path to start acting more and more aggressive. At first he explained he last minute wanted to meet outside first and walk back to his place since it's just across the park. Unfortunately he was able to push me onto the ground, but I kept raising my voice and fighting back. Eventually he left saying I was a "disappointment", even though there still was enough forced penetration to cause blood - I saved myself that night...

Compared to when I couldn't protect myself partying alone in countries with language or resource barriers, like when I was roofied clubbing in Varadera, Cuba or when I was publicly humiliated while also clubbing alone in Lisbon, Portugal. I always found my way home despite the violence of this world. Even after I found myself out by a bush on the side of the road with the sky brightening up: bruised, with grass in my panties half down my legs and my shoes/bag including phone and wallet all missing, I still found and begged my way back to a place of rest... I remembered in Lisbon, humiliated by a drunk man hitting on me then yelling at his friends, with him feeling humiliated after realizing that I'm trans in an intimate live-music venue. I drank more and more; I remembered ugly-crying non-stop until I walked back to the hotel, but I still made it back home. Like the 1st rape, all of these traumatic incidents I was able to process easier and still function through after more rest and physical recovery because it's all so textbook-trauma to me. Under those circumstances I never blamed myself so hard, just harsh lessons of not letting men give me drinks or rides without extra safety cautions - especially if I really want to go out alone or if I happen to be in places without resources to crisis support... And I said it to be "textbook trauma", as it's when one can easier persuade one's brain to accept victimhood, so there's ease on the self/inner/victim-blame. This binary narrative of marginalized victim against public violence is helpful to survival when the situation is understood to be targeted, or systematic - thus a historical, cultural, socio-political and economical pattern of harm. I fought with all my life again and again, not to be a death by statistic as I realize that resilience wasn't a choice but forced...

However, the 2nd and recently 3rd rape still feels like my fault because both times I was hosting as a survival sex worker doing in-calls. And I define "survival sex work" as sex trade for necessity. So when someone said it's not "survival" sex work because someone else already paid for my rent, since it's my own mental illness that caused me to run away to be in a motel room. They hurt and triggered; It triggered not my familiar flight but awakened my fight. As I really have been violated, even work-studied at a sexual violence prevention and support centre for months, but fuck that. I know it when I can no longer sleep in where it happened. I know my body and what I didn't consent to, especially when there's no compensation even with discussions of a possible transaction... For the last 2 weeks or so I've stopped trying to survive I started to fight, from the solar eclipse to the recent full moon and lunar eclipse, I've been grieving the loss of myself in that motel room. Since Leon decided to die after enjoying a day out on the solar eclipse, wrote love poems as their last words, but cried themselves to sleep instead after watching the film: "Everything Everywhere All At Once". Though Leon did die after being raped for the 3rd time here in so called "Canada", Li Yang Tsai survived. And sometimes I truly have nothing but gratitude for my triggers, as it was because of heavy police presence which triggered my flight again, finally escaping the daily risks of state/gun violence after killing a part of myself and leaving Leon there to rot... I realize that Li Yang cries even more sometimes, as Leon tried to find answers through poetry but Li Yang asks questions. Tsai, Li Yang still cries asking why but 22 years later, Li Yang understands nothing after feeling everything; whereas Leon tried to understand everything until they felt nothing. And Leon survives in shadows when I almost chose flight again, where I felt myself wilting away with the cherry blossom season ending and wanted to hide, but I fought. Especially when many people know I've not been missing and just lost in feelings of abandonment, where helplessness via complicity is abundant with messages questioning my ideals of and past roles in community, I realized that indeed "care is a currency" and the city is out of capacity. So I chose to fight even if I have to deal with the police myself, as if there's something to prove when people continue to trigger without consideration or care of circumstances to a recent survivor in suicidality. I decided I will grow all my love towards forgiveness for both myself and this world, but I will no longer accept "tough love" or apathy from places and people that never accepted or asked to understand my softness...

"I tried to let go my lover[s]

Thought if I was alone then maybe I could recover

To write it away or cry it away..." (Solange)

I accept any/all requests of interpersonal accountability processes and engagements by people who have been harmed by my actions or reactions. Though I realized there is no perfect victim or survivor, and we aren't collectively well enough to have a transformative justice process that includes the accountability or well-being of all involved... I have tried to kill myself and disappear to hold myself accountable, to beg for forgiveness or at least empathy. "Many of us were taught to be over-accountable", especially those who grew up in abusive households where not people-pleasing meant possibilities of harm. Mia Mingus reminds us that "transformative justice is grief work," because often "community is ableist and inaccessible". Since relationships are the crux of transformative justice, and colonial-capitalism profits off our broken relations, can we still believe in accountability and transformation if all we've been taught is restorative "justice" through punishment ? ... Rania El Mugammar reminds us: "Lets humble ourselves and get ready for that world, if the police stations and prisons are gone tomorrow, can we sustain that world ?" I became so bitter with the world after my 2nd rape, I cried my way into curiosity of prison abolition and transformative justice since I knew reporting to the police as a sex worker would not help, nor would my rapist be offered the help he needs through removal and isolation. I started believing in transformative through rehabilitation, and collective healing through inter-dependance of care. Thus now I also come to understand, how inter-dependance of care will not only crumble in a city that survives on the conditional practices independence and co-dependance. Though I still don't have the answers to inter-dependant care, so I understand the unwillingness to believe or understand while witnessing my trials-and-errors...

I really should have known when my brain started acting up, months ago. First I remembered mixing up names of drugs and things I usually care to research on. Then I started up mistaking times and places, showing up at public demonstrations way to early by confusion, or buying everyone tickets to a show but showing up to nothing. I started to rush and stress, mixing up information, still I tried to force-function through... I should have called it quits by numbing myself each day with THC and CBD, I should have known when depression spreads from head to the body - slowly, painfully, and chronically. No one deserves to feel deadly. I know I should have asked for a pause in reflection or questioned everyone involved harder, especially when I couldn't go home to rest after catching COVID-19 from my own house, while still recovering mentally and emotionally from a suicide attempt feeling like a displaced burden... I forgive and feel sorry, for how everyone was at their own capacity of care, to choose isolation when I most needed care. I deserved communication and discussion. And I truly am sorry but not surprised, for not getting better when no one was compromising for care needed. I considered myself both blessed and cursed to have someone cute in company, whom I've learned a lot from but was ashamed to heal with. There was nothing but shame and abandonment growing each time I tried to function and mold myself back into survival, to fit in that house and room. Especially when wellness check was called, and now after 2 months of wearing the same 3 outfits while still carrying a winter jacket -with no one checking in for safety or asking me to come home, sleeping everywhere but nowhere, with anyone for anything - I cried myself to clarity...

I should have accepted offers of community mediation long ago, even though all friends who have helped me set up the gofundme knew I needed to move out also. I regret choosing to name it a "healing" fund instead of a "survival" one, how bold, and who did I think I was. All is still surviving in the city who is healing ? It was my own hopes and expectations that drowned me - believing those saying they believe also. Yet not with bitterness and full of forgiving possibilities I say let's grieve. Myself including, we must grieve for what we believed in but could not complete in practice. And I finally choose to leave, as I realized that I will hate myself surviving or else kill myself trying to heal here... Still here I am trying, writing the same poem again and again, trying to piece together timelines, events, and reasons of we harmed each other calling it love. But wasn't it love, thus we were harmed also ? We all cared at some point, and I still believe we do. I can write a million blog posts on how hurt I am or how I should have done better and prevented harm, but it all happened. People are moving on and so must I, as we must live. What people have learned, if any, is not my priority. My grief lessons are mine, and I will continue to grow and love towards rehabilitation and accountability... The city still makes me cry, so i must fly away. Capitalism won't save us, it makes us cruel and scared. I'm tired of witnessing us becoming more and more like the people we said have hurt us. I want change and I want to change, I'm sorry that it's scary but aren't we constantly in transition ? Don't "we happen like everything happens, partly because of how we're made and partly because of whatever forces are acting on us. Everything in the galaxy is one thing becoming another thing. And every person is constantly growing into another version of themselves... We're all in transition" ("Sort Of" by Bilal Baig). So I will dance into the sky with love poems as goodbyes, I will cry with the stars when I miss you and send wishes of care, I will live softly.

“TJ may not always be possible or appropriate”

“If we don’t have soil for transformation, then justice may not be possible yet”

“We have to stop planting seeds in toxic soil and expecting them to grow”

- Mia Mingus

The 2 names I love and hate the most is: Leon Tsai, Li Yang. Thus I say Leon died, because “listen, punishment is easier, I do not know if any of you all who have ever really done your own healing and dug deep into it, but it is hard. Just having someone punish you and give the consequences and that its over, verses people who are like we will not let you turn away from yourself, we will not let you turn away from your demons, you are going to deal with them and face that. That is some of the most serious stuff ever. It is a incredible difficult thing. People are like, TJ, it is just this soft type of justice. I am like, I do not know what you’re talking about but it is really hard to shift your behaviour- to transform”... I still seed and value softness as virtuous practice, as “TJ is a harm reduction framework” (Mia Mingus). If we can't save each other can we at least be safer with each other ? I believe we can if we choose love instead of fear. People say get "professional help" and "love yourself", but what happens when both professionals and yourself have tried to kill you ?Ableism blooms in binaries of the “get help” and “help yourself”, where people don’t consider how you’ve asked for help already and that you’re helping yourself by not being institutionalized. People think self-admitting is easy: self-preservation is hard, especially in a pandemic. We as mad people have to consistently remind the world of our autonomy, but still asked why we can’t keep sane or functional in the first place. I felt as if I was in 'the yellow wallpaper' (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Like the 'rest cure' to mentally ill people in 1860/70s, or like the burning of mad and queer people, and like the histories of violent institutionalization, isolation through infantilization or even villainization is justified to the misunderstood and abandoned... What if our lack of capacity is the limitations of care that has been shown to us ? I believe if we are to be given more then one day we will learn to give back. I believe in giving back, in holding on even when it hurts, and I believe in leaving when there's nothing to give... In a city that tries, we all came and grew longing of love. I have prayed to be useful, begged to be needed or wanted, I have tried to explain with words and a language I was forced to learn. I now must learn that enough is enough so a lesson on letting go. My heart is full with gratitude and grief that I thank you, all who have been witnesses to both my glorious and shameful journey of embracing madness. We must learn to do better, to confront our cracks of deep ableism, to invest in care work and intergenerational healing. I believe we deserve, I believe we can, and I believe we will...

"we believers in softness here believe in imagination, the colour pink believe in ‘fuck the police’ poetry...

believe in our hearts as heaven. i believe in bath time

i believe in bubbles on my nose, and warm warm water i believe in my bed. i love my bed but sometimes i’m afraid that if i die

everyone will be too tired to remember my name,

so i take care of my little body you, take care of your little body take care...

so when all we have left is each other’s song and unknotted curls and clammy hands we can rejoice and dance for having loved our skin so well for having found finally at the end a healthy way to hold take care...

and repeat it ritual, until the syllables run on sentence down your spine so that when the next deaths come, because they will we will have vigour enough to remember their names speak them angel into our pillows at night and wear them in our hair in the morning..."

- "take care" by TASHA