is it here?
or here?
My friend pointed out a book about a gay couple, who were bequested a house near Machynlleth.
It was from a (very) elderly gay couple who had, finally,been allowed to be married (the first same-sex marriage in “Mach”)after a life-long relationship.
Here:
It got me thinking about the nature of home(land),especially for gay men: myself , but within a politico-historico-socio-cultural context of
INVISIBILISATION
BRUTALISATION (by the law of the land)
and how we RE-CLAIM our lands, ours as much as anyone else’s…or: are we so ruptured by psychological(sometimes, literal) diaspora, that home(land) will ALWAYS be mooted/negotiated/fought over.
For me, as a gay man, it has been an emotional RE-SETTLEMENT.
Via, all stations including
UPROOTING (mental mirroring geographical,and vice versa)
(sometimes attempted, only) {RE} planting.
INVASION can take many forms: internalised (from anathematic EXternal forces) self-oppression as a gay man(starting with me as a gay BOY); it is, indeed, like the rhizomatic threads off threads of skeins.
INVASION can also take the forms of:
ASSAULT AND PROLONGED ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR FROM NEIGHBOURS
INCOMPETENT, SOMETIMES ANTAGONISTIC, (SOCIAL!….) LANDLORDS: eg”Sanctuary Housing Association”, inter alia, a chaotic, aggressive profit-making private company in the outward garb of a housing asssociation)
MICE INFESTATION (current invasion; in a toxic combination with ANOTHER chaotic, dysfunctional “housing association”)
MORE SUBTLY/COMPLEXEDLY: unresolved residue, lingering in the deeper recesses of my mind, of previous traumas, which are, then/later, RE-stimulated by echoes (of not the same traumas, exactly, but with unsilenceable echoes…..).
There ARE remedies for all this; though they take some profound application and staying-power; but they work, to a degree.
- TIME/PLACE BOUNDARIES: “{mantra}that was then/there; this is now/here”; factored into this is that, as I say, there are resonances, and-some-similarities betwixt these time-zones; these have to be unentangled{skein image; tell, not show…..}, painstakingly.These muddy, murky, (semi)subconscious tollings of memory silt up the waters
[TBC…..]
towardsutopia 