Thursday, May 29, 2014

Transformation Soup: Identifying My Body’s Gender

This article was originally published in print in LILIPOH Magazine's Culture Pulse Pages in the Winter 2013 issue. This is my first published article.

BIG thanks to my friend and editor of this article, Leslie Loy for this wonderful opportunity to share my story in LILIPOH Magazine. Another BIG thank you to the editor of LILIPOH Magazine, Christy Korrow for including the article in the Winter 2013 issue. Thank you both for this opportunity!

In Light and wellness,

Ewan

Transformation Soup: Identifying My Body’s Gender
Ewan Duarte

My body—this porcelain skin, these green eyes that can see the beauty of the world as well as the challenges and harsh realities of life. My auburn, curly hair that used to be red. Red as my beard. My body is always changing, growing, regenerating, experiencing, and aging. From sunrise to sunset, with the circadian rhythms as the Earth traverses around the sun. The sun, the moon, the stars, and my time here on this Earthly plane in this temporal, physical form.

When I think of my body, I think of a gift—a divine gift that I chose. I chose to be born this way, in this skin. One of my greatest challenges and blessings was to slowly learn, unravel, and discover who I authentically am, and am meant to be, within this physical form. This is my temporal gift, one I am always with: my body, a beautiful dysphoric body. These muscles, these strong bones, the blood coursing through my veins remind me of my ancestral ties: Eastern European Jews, Mexicans, and German people—a real diversity soup. I am a culmination of my ancestors, their existence, sacrifices, and lives. My blood, my bones, my body connect me to them all. I am proud of them for simply being and existing.

When did I realize that I was uncomfortable in my body? That the word “girl,” that “woman” did not fit me? Was it when I was a child playing on the all-boys football team at my elementary school in Clovis, California? My Dad picked me up after one of the games or practices. He asked me in the car, “Rachel, do you know the difference between boys and girls?” I got instantly upset and reactive. I yelled, “Yes!” That was the end of the conversation. It was quiet in the car as my Dad drove us home. Writing and reflecting upon this now, I thought that my Dad was referring to anatomy. I had the body of a girl. Yet, I wanted to play on the boys’ football team. It would take me until nearly a decade later, while attending college at UC Santa Cruz, to begin to question my own gender identity, to be exposed to and become part of a queer/transgender community.

My body. My soul. My spirit. It was during one of my meditations in my Portland, Oregon apartment that I realized, was able to receive the clarity and guidance, that I was a boy. I felt so happy and elated to finally know. I wanted to tell the world “I’m a beautiful boy!” To express it out loud—to shout with joy! Boy! After years of inquiry, personal examination, taking queer/transgender studies classes, reading books, articles, viewing film/media, going to lectures, and having conversations about queer/trans themes and experiences, I now had the experience. All of my studies and inquiry were the foundation to prepare me for this unfolding clarity—that I am a transgender guy.

I was simply, me, Rachel at the time. A unique individual with a feminine voice and laughter. I had felt androgynous for years—in between the “gender binary” of boy and girl. I was neither. I was a gender-fluid being. With this new clarity, I was continuing on my personal path of truth and authenticity. I was beginning to externalize the way that I felt internally. I now had a name for the way that I had felt for so many years: transgender.

The spaces my soul has travelled, traversed, and experienced thus far on my path as a transgender man are colorful, infinite, and spiral-like. Wow! I have come so far from where I have been, having experienced both soul and physical shifts. I have physically transitioned to become a man socially and holistically while living in San Francisco during graduate school.

I am in the transformation soup. How many fires must I go through? How many initiations to become the man that I truly am? Expressing myself holistically—this is my truest, most authentic form that I inhabit. This body that transcends gender, rises above it. Yet, I claim the identities of transgender, FTM (female to male), transsexual, and man. I am a man. I was a beautiful boy and I have become a beautiful man. An integrated man who honors his divine femininity and masculinity. A man who has lived this journey and continues to live it every day.

To continue to walk one’s path with personal truth, conviction, clarity, and empowerment. I choose to continue to be and express myself in a way that is most resonant and authentic. Today I am an empowered man, comfortable in my skin. I am grateful to be here now. Grateful that I know that my essence is a timeless being of love and light. Temporally, in my human form, I am Ewan, a transgender man; and so much more.




Ewan Duarte is an artist, writer, and award-winning filmmaker. He was born and raised in Fresno, California and received BAs in American studies and film/Digital media from UC Santa Cruz. Ewan studied and practiced Waldorf education at the Micha-el Institute in Portland, Oregon and recently graduated from San Francisco State University with an MFA in cinema. Ewan’s most recent films, Spiral Transition (2010) and Change Over Time (2013) have screened nationally and worldwide at film festivals, conferences, and art events. To receive updates about film festival screenings, join his newsletter, or to inquire about exhibiting his work, email Ewan at ewanduarte@gmail.com.

VISION
Culture Pulse is a pursuit in understanding the attitudes, questions and manifestations of human creativity in co-cultivating a community that nourishes lives of meaning.

EDITOR’S THOUGHTS
In the last Culture Pulse section, we explored our relationship to spaces, particularly the spaces around us, and how they are mirrored in our experiences of them. What if we begin to recognize that we physically inhabit not only spaces such as rooms, gardens, and so forth, but that our bodies and even aspects of our soul experiences are also spaces? In this issue, we invite Ewan Duarte, a California filmmaker, to reflect on his relationship to his body as he transitioned from a female to male body, and documented the process of what it means to relate to the one space we can never separate ourselves from, and yet which we largely identify with as aspects of ourselves—our bodies.




Saturday, May 3, 2014

Culture shock in Clovis

I've been back in my hometown of Clovis/Fresno for less than a month. I've been unpacking, acclimating, and catching up on rest. I've been exhausted from moving out of my apartment in Albuquerque as well as the 1,000 mile drive that I did in 2 days! The landscape was spectacular as I drove from the Southwest back to California. I have a deeper appreciation for the beautiful fertile farmland in the Central Valley in California, where I grew up. It's incredible to drive through Eastern California through the Mojave Desert and then to gradually transition into driving into beautiful farmland in the Central Valley. Most of the produce that I bought in Albuquerque was shipped from California and 2x or 3x the price of organic produce in California. I'm grateful for beautiful and rich farmland. The San Joaquin Valley is known as the Breadbasket of the World. California is truly the Golden State in many ways. It's a shift for me to see such cultivated land rather than the wilds of the New Mexican landscape. Albuquerque was so quiet. It's the only city where I've lived that is completely surrounded by uncultivated land. I do appreciate and have a core need for peace and quiet. Yet, while living in ABQ, I realized that I need a balance of excitement as well as peace and quiet. Living in a City surrounded by wild, desert land made ABQ seem like it was in the middle of nowhere. Well, it's in the middle of the desert. Yet, as a young, creative person I need more of that balance that I mentioned.

For me, the desert is a place for me to go for a stint of time. To work on a creative art project or movie, a place to focus on healing, a place for visioning, cleansing, purging, and getting perspective on one's life. As well as being open to the clarity that comes from being in the desert, in the Southwest. There is no place like the Southwest that I've traveled to on this planet. I have an immense amount of deep respect, appreciation, and reverence for the desert, and the Spirits of the Land. I'm grateful for my perspective, lessons, and recent chapter there.

A bunch of my friends in the Bay Area said to me when I visited in March and then again in April for Passover that it felt like they had seen me yesterday. For me, it felt like so much time had passed. From the month that I spent in Portland during September 2013 to the 6 months I had lived in the desert. So much had happened in the chapter that I lived. To my friends who were still in the Bay Area, our conversations and connections picked up from where they had left off. It was as if I had time traveled for a stint of time and returned the next day. I have changed profoundly. While my friends see me as the same person that they had seen just a day before. Time is a construct. Time is.

Edward Abbey said something to the degree that it's so important that some land is left wild and untamed. It's so healthy for the human soul to gaze out on such vast landscapes and see wild land, wild nature. Just as it is. Without any human intervention, cultivation, infrastructure, urban planning, branding, etc.

In Clovis, I've been helping my parents with purging things in the garage. We had a yard sale. I've sold stuff on Craigslist, etc.
I'm glad to be back in California. Yet, I am in the process of discerning my next steps. I've been looking for resonant temp. work in the Clovis/Fresno area, rather than long-term work since I will be going on a wonderful professional film opportunity at the end of May. It's the Pride Of The Ocean Film Festival opportunity. I'll be going to NYC and then on a film festival cruise to Bermuda! My film, Change Over Time will screen. I am very much looking forward to the opportunity!

I've been experiencing culture shock in my own hometown of Clovis. Although, I haven't lived here for years, there is more to it than that. To quote, Jem Bluestein, "I'm an anomaly." This is in reference to me being from the Clovis/Fresno area. Yes, I was born and raised here physically, yet I resonate more with the culture, art, progressive politics, consciousness, and intellectualism of being from a more urban area. Such as the Bay Area. I get my cultural, culinary, literary, and art aesthetics and sensibilities from my Mom who was raised in Berkeley during her teen years in the 1960's and also lived with her family in France and Israel in her late teens and early twenties. My Mom's experiences living and traveling in Europe had an immense impact on her artistic, fashion, and culinary sensibilities, consciousness, and aesthetics. So, yes. I am an anomaly in the Central Valley. I never fit in here and I'm glad that I don't. I'm grounded in who I am and I'm grateful to be me. There are qualities and cultural aspects in Clovis that I forget, that aren't on the forefront of my everyday experiences anymore. Perhaps, they are buried. Until this most recent visit/stint of living here.

For example, seeing some hairstyles that I haven't seen in years since living here. There was a braid on the entire backside of a woman's head. I haven't seen that hairstyle since I was in high school. Hearing a man behind me with a cowboy hat tell a cashier at the grocery store that he's in town since his daughter is in the rodeo this weekend. A woman behind me at the grocery store asking me what the cucumber and tehini I'm buying is for? What will I make with it? I told her that I was going to make hummus. She then proceeded to ask me, "when did I learn how to eat healthy?" A conversation like that would probably not happen in line at the Berkeley bowl.

I volunteered last week to photograph pictures of Raw Fresno at the Old Town Clovis Farmer's Market. Unbeknownst to me it was during the 100th Anniversary of the Clovis Rodeo Parade. I watched as the Clovis High School Marching band paraded along the street. As well as the Clark marching band and others. Then a truck full of smiling, high school cheerleaders, cheering. Also, a lot of American flags, horses, and vestiges of the pioneer history and remnants, such as a sign that said, "California or bust" on a wagon or old-fashioned car. As well as horses with people decked out in Western wear and Mexican-Americans, sporting the Mexican flag to show, to me a reminder that California belonged to Mexico until 1848, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. People alongside the streets wore Western wear and cowboy hats. The Clovis Rodeo was completely sold out and people wanted more tickets. Snippets of conversations here and there. I gazed at the parade with earplugs in since there were many blank gun shots from rifles that kept being shot into the air. Also, a strong military presence was in the parade. This reminded me of all of the Clovis High school rallies in the Gym, Football games, and overall Clovis culture that I never resonated with and always felt like an outsider from. An "Other" in my own hometown. I watched the drum line as they marched by and I thought of all of the fierce and sexist competition from the boys as well as the teachers that I put up with just to be on the drum line. I was in the marching band when I was in Middle school at Clark and for a year at Clovis High. The farmer's market across the street that sold organic produce where I was, wasn't in existence when I was in high school. Yes, things are changing, yet that dominant Clovis culture, that is "The Clovis Way Of Life" still does exist here. Thus, my feelings/experiences of culture shock.

Thanks for reading! More to come!

Feel free to comment or like if you are inspired, since my blog audience is a silent audience.

Light and wellness,

Ewan