World AIDS Day.
The past few days snowy, quiet. Feeling fairly well actually, few or no side effects – a big improvement over the five days of low-level fever last week. Thus less distracted, less incoherent.
Tonight was a masked ball – a fundraiser, a chaos of music and people (about 130, which is quite good I think, as the truly severe weather must have kept many at home); the first time that I know of that Newcastle has run something quite like this for World AIDS Day. Energetic, loony, many kinds of entertainment and things going on; I wore the southern Indian suit of dark gold cotton that I bought for a celebration in the late 1990s, at Ma Jaya's ashram. Complete with sandals, masses of beads, a white scarf – it was fun to pull something so unusual out of the back of the closet. (A picture with Roweena, who managed the entire ball, quite impressively.)
I was dragged there by Jambo and his partner Colin; I'm glad they kept me going, I would have given up otherwise in the face of the snow and slow taxis and general complexity of getting it together. A sense of family, of people pushing me to be involved, of not letting me lay around at home. (Not to mention: a very familiar sense of gay men fussing about their costumes – who knows how to tie a bow tie these days? Colin finally faked it, loose around his neck.)
I wasn't in charge of anything, which was fine – it's rather nice to just sit back; managed to not feel proprietary about it either.
Tomorrow, December 2, is the anniversary of Reid Beitrusten's death in 1983; a long time to remember so precisely. A date I hold on to, refusing to let go of it.
Yesterday, my mother's sister, Aunt Effie, died – her name was really Aphrodite (Afrothiti); a smart, spiky, take-charge woman, hugely kind but strong, taking care of many people for her 93 years. Three smart, interesting, very different but confident daughters, a host of grandchildren and now great-grandchildren... What's the most important thing to say about her? You knew she would always give it to you straight: that she could be honest and ethical and strong in any situation, because it wouldn't occur to her to be any other way. Really she was the strong backbone for her brother (my brash, entertainingly lively Uncle Greg) and her sister (my gentler but more worried mother) – a bit like my eldest sister Sandy, who is now also gone. Though Sandy tended to be quieter and more reserved... but they were both always the smart one who safely guides their younger brothers and sisters... if only we are smart enough to listen.
Tomorrow, teaching a class – will get there somehow for 9 am. Already a group of students canceling due to weather and various excuses, but oh well, I have to get there anyway. Somehow.
This crossing of disparate experiences and memories, of ancient and recent losses, of my ideas about how World AIDS Day should be presented and what it means, compared to this party and elaborate costume – it is all interesting, and a bit disorienting: but in a good way –
perhaps the point of much of my experience of the past two years is that living in the flow of other people, something I haven't done enough over the past ten years, drags me into a less predictable world, but also out of the premature grave I've dug for myself –
you know the one: the one I started digging twenty-seven years ago, tomorrow.
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