The Fanatic Transformation, Part 3 of 3….I don’t know what comes next.   

I have great respect for people who have had to find the courage to come out entirely for who they are, many of them after decades of oppression and self-sacrifice.  I admire true individuals, who by their very nature, must live in contradiction to the masses.  Their victories, the practice of love and freedom for self, often confused by the majority, the well meaning and martyred guardians of society.  They are quiet soldiers, who bring a gift to us. “… the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us", (The Gift:  Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde).  I would never have won my own fight for love & freedom if it were not for the gifts of my comrades in the revolution, whose stories and word I believed in, that made it possible for me to conceive of a freedom and self-respect that I could not yet imagine for myself.  I was crippled by fear, self-loathing the cancer of my soul, addictions once my friend now my oppressor, and an exit plan that would end in death.  

We are an eclectic mass across the world; revolutionaries who have responded to the calling of our souls, free of self-loathing, filled with love for self, freedom from bondage.       When we think it is time to settle into a comfortable, albeit less inspiring phase of life, we are called to return to the revolution, invited quietly through the call of a comrade who appears quietly when we are ready for the next advance. The first time I saw Henry, heard him speak, watched him move, read his work, I knew he was a revolutionary. I was called to return to fight against the self-sacrifice that had returned to my life through complacency.    Through reading and listening to a sliver of his massive body of work, I’ve been ‘in school’ reading voraciously some of the books Henry respects, listening to a new universe of music, and have stepped up my commitments to creative expression and entrepreneurial life.    While this is a beautiful and unexpected gift, the greatest inspiration has been his story of self-respect and love through honoring his need for freedom.  As I read about Henry’s journey across the global neighborhood, I was moved by his candor as he wrote about his need for freedom and solitude.  A lone wolf, his favorite times alone in villages and cities across the world, walking their streets at night, returning to his room alone, music and writing the only lovers waiting for his return.  His anguish documented in his journals, a masterpiece in human struggle and evolution.  A profound sense of connection occurred yet he is a stranger I’d never met.   A man with a gorgeous soul, a warrior leading the revolution for those of us who recognized him. I wrote to Henry.  I tried to sound sane and keep it brief.  A few notes about his comments on love and freedom in A Preferred Blur, Reflections, Inspections And Travel In All Directions 2007, and more recently to let him know if he had no objections I would like to write about him.  He is kind and understands inspiration. 

Stories of revolutionaries like Henry appear in the most unlikely times and places.   I was moved on the 1st day of 2010 right here at OS by fellow revolutionaries, Hear Me Roar, and Sirenita Lake, my latest heroines in the war against self-sacrifice.  Hear Me Roar’s story of love for herself in her article, I Changed Sex and Died,  a profound story of the worst in our fellow humans, and a heroine so brave in her fight against oppression, I will  remember her story, and inspiration, always.      Sirenita Lake’s delightful repost of Why I Hate Monogamy , a brilliant commentary on the possibilities of love that most individuals will never have the courage to explore.