Hey, reader. Are you radical? That word has bad connotation to some. But you know I do radical mental health, one of my main projects. Radical is a favorite concept and word.
Likewise Ming is radical. We’re buddies on that. Luckily almost all of our values are shared: our relationship has such longevity partly for this reason. We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. We want a new boat, or a new way of making boats. We strive together.
Radical people are my favorite because we’re trying something different. For that we’re creative. We have no choice but to make our own paths.
you can go your own way
When’s the last time you had to make your own path? Here are a few examples from my life.
- being a queer child and teenager in a hometown that didn’t embrace queer people
- surviving into adulthood with an ACE score of 9
- having unusual close friendships, some with huge age gaps: long ago a bestie who was around 40 years older than me, and these days my closest friend in town is 25 years younger than me
- homelessness
- starting multiple radical mental health collectives, over the years: Sacramento, Las Vegas, and now Eugene
- doing happy relationships after lacking happy relationship models
- starting the Eugene transqueer fat disabled dance
- beautiful disabled life
- marrying myself
I love being close to people who don’t prize the norm. We have things to do besides conventional values. Let’s support each other in making a happier culture and protecting Parent Earth.
What do you worship–money or love? Money has never kept me safe. Sure I need some funds in the current state. But love makes a house a home. Love motivates me. Love glows inside me, its own force. It makes me strive to shift culture to community, interdependence, compassion, and mutual aid.
what it means
They say it means “to the root.” What’s a radical in math? I think radical is getting to the deepest part of something. Not pruning a random branch, but digging into the earth to find the basic part.
Not lost in the sauce. I imagine a table covered in plates, utensils, gleaming serving spoons, beautiful cloths, rich dinner foods. I’m a tiny person in the silver gravy boat, and the gravy is thick and yellow, a salty plant gravy with saffron. Kind of like a malai kofta sauce.
That’s the sauce I’m lost in, when I’m not being radical. I’m swept up in delicious nonsense, drunk on dinner.
For some reason I’m a cartoonish lil white dude in this fantasy. Thank you for being derailed with me.
questions for discussion
Is being radical a risk?
Are you frustrated by misunderstandings?
What’s worth being misunderstood?
How have you made your own path?
What systems need a complete overhaul?
What radical ideas most excite you?
Will you be a lil cartoon person in a gravy boat with me, for just a quick swim?
