Stoned love . . . I’m supposed to quit pot, but I don’t wanna. I guess it’s my one weak spot in the armour, but I can’t help it. Everyone needs at least one vice in order to be a fully rounded member of society in my view. Unfortunately I also have the vice of smoking, which is an unruly, expensive, smelly habit, with little to no redeeming value. I had quit for a number of months until I ended up back in the bin.

I don’t know how to describe smoking and being in the bin. I think it’s really difficult to quit in that kind of situation, because it’s often the only socially acceptable behaviour that everyone can agree on. Plus at the bin I was in, it was the only excuse to leave the ward and go stand by the river in nearly idyllic surroundings. You would not believe the number of smokers in the bin.

But the nice part about smoking is that it was a chance to bond with fellow patients. Leaving the judgemental gaze of the nurses was nice, and people could swap tips on how to get out quicker.

I got released MOSTLY because I was ready to be released, but also partially because there was a looming strike vote among the social workers and pharmacists, and they needed people out as quick as possible. For a brief time, the only requirements for release was that you had somewhere to sleep. I remember one fellow patient telling me “I prayed to God so hard that they would strike!” They didn’t strike, but they did go from having 30 beds to having 10, and that was extreme. Luckily I was ready to leave.

Recovery from a manic episode takes a long damn time though. I keep feeling better with each week that passes, but it’s hard. I do notice a difference though, as time slowly ticks by I have more energy, slightly more optimism. I don’t know how to explain the humiliation that happens after each episode abates, but it’s crushing. Luckily for the most part I can forget it, except that I ruined an awfully lovely relationship of sorts with an awfully lovely person, and that it probably what still haunts me today. I don’t know how to get over that.

Don’t bogart that joint my friend . . .

it’s a nice calm Sunday morning. I’m drinking coffee and reading Facebook. I don’t know why I get addicted to these sites except that it’s nice reading about my friends. I’ve decided to apply for the directors lab at the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. I think I need a chance to work on my directorial skills. Sometimes I’m not too sure about them, but I know if I got more training I would have it down pat. So far I’ve only directed my friends and myself, so a little more work on my skills would be good.

In less than a week I’ll be at Banff, working on a new project, Dangerous Bird. It’s kind of a funny ode to the war on terror, with a cryptozoology twist.

I’ve been seriously considering joining a local ghost hunting group, on the paranormal end of things. I’ve been wanting to join one for ages. All I know about ghost hunting I learned from Yvette Fielding! Seriously though, I’ve had way too many encounters with the unknown to dismiss ghosts. I think poltergeists are the scariest ones I’ve run into. They are so crabby. Anyway, it would also be a good chance for me to meet more people in this town, which is something I need to do. I’m glad to notice I’m steadily expanding my repetoire of friends here in Saskatoon. I really didn’t have too many before.

Transitioning to a guy is a funny process. So far it’s been getting people used to my new name, the pronouns are taking a while to come to people’s lips though. I’m doing good but I’ll be glad when the FTM group starts again. I need to have some support in this. I dunno. It’s good to have support groups for this kind of stuff. I’m excited about starting hormones although I don’t know when it will happen. Sometime in the next year I guess. It’s irritating having to wait, but I’m glad I’ll be stabilized when it starts. I have no idea how moody I’ll get. But that one shot I had didn’t make me feel like, ragey or moody or anything. In fact, I felt perfectly normal.

Maybe that’s how my transition will be. Just normal. I hope so. Testosterone: An Encounter With the Unknown.

I’m sitting in my mother’s basement scratching my brains for some new information to put here. Well, in a week and a bit I am heading off to Banff for Interactive Screen 0.7. I’m not entirely sure what to expect, except that it will be fun and I will get to work on a new project. There are a lot of panels and so on, so it should be exciting, I hope. There’s rumours that it’s the hot place to go in Canada for sex, but I dunno, my sex drive is pretty pitiful these days.

We just got through some record heatwaves and I really noticed how they affected my mood, I got all depressed and listless and felt hopeless. Some of that is due to my housing situation, and now a new situation in regards to my finances. I’m feeling pretty good but not good enough to work, and my illness benefits with E.I. are coming to an end. This means I have to get a letter from my doctor saying I’m ready to go back to work or I have to go on Social Assistance entirely until I move in October, HOPEFULLY. I say hopefully because the worst case scenario is that I can’t move until November. Everything seems so up in the air right now. And I’m still waiting for my doctor to decide I am stabilized enough to get on hormones. That could be a few months still.

Not to mention I am getting packer envy. I really want a Mr. Right packer, and that’s not going to happen for a while yet. I also really want a chest binder and that’s in the works for later on when I can find a talented seamstress who is up to the task. I asked my friend Megan but she was non-commital, which makes sense since she’s really busy these days. It will happen, I know.

And one more month until the FTM group gets going again. LIFE IS WEIRD> I’m missing having a proper working keyboard for my computer in case you were wondering. Sometimes it goes to all caps for no reason.

I’ve decided to apply to the CFC for the Director’s Program, which is about five months. I’m thinking I should do SOMETHING, and they want you to have a feature screenplay for it. The tuition is a fair chunk, but I think my band will cover it.

Things have been weird around here. My cousin got beat up by some random strangers, and it kind of freaked me out about the issues of random violence here in Saskatoon. It’s pretty funny too after living in the Downtown Eastside for a year or whatever. Big City random violence hasn’t happened to that many people I know. I got beat up once in Saskatoon, it scared the shit out of me. I mean, I just don’t understand people who hit.

Or yell. Yelling wigs me out. Especially at children.

In Indian families cousins are like sisters and brothers. And all my cousins are pretty cool, now that they are older. I feel particularly bad for my one cousin though who got beat up because he was trying to clean up his act.

I think I’ve reached a turning point in my life. Being in a care home has given me the chance to leave the house with as many different people as possible, so I’m actually getting a bit of a life. And the NMAI is putting up a Close Up on me on their website, which will be cool. And I’m going to Banff soon, which will be fun. I need to go be an artist and see what happens.

I just wrote the first two minutes of The Wetigo Hunter. I feel like maybe I sped things up a bit, faster than they should be. It’s hard writing the first two minutes, I want it to be perfect. It opens with a character called Erika, a vampire. It’s pretty hot. She has a transgendered lover she feeds on, pretty kinky stuff!

I like screenplay writing. This one I think I will write in my spare time while I do my documentary. If I can get my screenplay produced I will have access to Greenberg funding for screenplay writing. Mostly it’s also a good idea to have screenplays written for the next time people ask “What are you working on?” Especially when I get Bunnyhug produced. I like how Bunnyhug turned out, I’m really happy with it, and that’s a good thing. There were times when I was just pissed off at it, it wasn’t turning out the way I wanted, parts of it didn’t jive with other parts, etc etc. It was definitely a learning process.

Finding a producer is rough so far though. I feel like I don’t know any! Although my uncle is a producer. Bunnyhug could be, like, the landmark aboriginal comedy!! About survival through poverty and madness! You never know!

One unusual and hopefully permanent trend is my weight loss. Back when I was on Zyprexa I packed on about 60 pounds, ugh! Not that fat is bad, just that it started to get really hard on me physically and what with having to buy newer and bigger clothes all the time.

Now I’m down about 30 pounds, and I seem to keep losin weight. The drugs I am on are rumoured to cause weight gain, but right now I seem to have plateaued into baggy jeans that are practically falling off my body. It’s a nice change I must admit, I just hope it doesn’t go back towards fat because I don’t think my reduced budget will afford me to buy new clothes.

Unfortunately it also means my breasts shrank, which is good on the trans front and not so good on the fact that I spent $300 on new bras.

In truth, I like my new improved body, it seems to fit me better, I like being able to see my toes again. And I hope hope hope that I don’t pack on weight like I did the last tim on these kinds of meds.

It sucks going crazy. I think one of the nicer things about bipolar disorder is that it doesn’t make one crazy forever. In fact there are LONG stretches of sanity that extend for years even. But going crazy, fuck it sucks. I hate it. I especially hate the dreary energy loss I have right now. want to just go straight back to bed, but instead I am having a coffee and trying to go on with the day.

Last night I spent 55 minutes standing in line for the new Harry Potter book, which I have and assumed I would speed read. Instead I am slowly perusing it and writing here.

It’s nice to be blogging again though. I missed that. I also missed writing, it’s been nice to be writing my screenplay again. And now I’m writing another one!!! It starts with a party in a country house, when a piercing scream shatters the marijuana riddled peace of some rural kids
. . .

That is the sexiest video ever!!! There’s a program you can get where you can make videos like that. think it’s called Rotoshop, if I remember it correctly. It’s based on an old timey animation process called Rotoscoping where you paint or draw over live action footage. I’ve always wanted to try it but Linklater’s film company uses it exclusively and always will, or at least until he’s done with that type of film work.

Anyway, this is really my celebratory post because yes, I finished that screenplay finally, and I’m so glad! I’ve been working on it forever and I think I am really proud of it. It achieved what I wanted it to anyway. I have to fix the beginning though, because I used an older version of my screenplay to finish and I forgot to put on the beginning, oops! Next I’m doing a documentary, as I mentioned before, and I’m also going to be working on my next screenplay, about some vampire lovers. I’ve always wanted to do the sexy vampire movie, but with like, a message besides “Doesn’t this look hot!” One where the vampires were the protagonists, like really sexy hot vampire protagonists, with ethics about their feeding and so on. That being said, it’s still going to be a bit of a horror film. I was thinking one of the vampires would be like the bottom, but an immortal bottom, and so in a symbiotic process they both need each other in order to live. And then there’s a killer. And then there are also some drunken wetigo hunters who start persecuting the vampires, and this question hanging through the whole film of “Is there really a wetigo somewhere around here?” And maybe the vampire starts turning into a wetigo and so they have to stop the process. I dunno. It’s going to be complex.

The screenplay I just finished is pretty good though. I wanted a love story about madness. I think it works. It’s funny though, it’s REALLY funny, and that’s a good thing, because it has to be a bit of a complex feel good. Because you know, movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted, are about SANE people stuck in looney bins, like that kind of trauma is okay for crazy people but not for these clearly sane people. And so I wanted to make the point that even for crazy people, some aspects of psych ward treatment are NOT GOOD! Like restraints. Restraints are dehumanizing.

I got sexually assaulted in the psych ward the first time I was in there, it was harsh. I’m pretty much healed from it now, but then it took over four years to get over it. Sometimes life’s like that.

Probably the worst thing about a manic episode is the memory loss. I totally forgot my password to my old email address, and rather than trying to remember it again I am just using a new one. All my distributors have it which was the main important thing, and then my friends are slowly finding out my new one care of Facebook. Thank god for the name change option on Facebook. I did a coming out where I gathered up as many people as I knew and then changed my gender and then changed my name. The Canada Council knows my new name too now. So all that’s left is for me to go and do a legal name change. I’m not sure what to do with my middle name. I’m not switching Jean into Gene, that’s for sure. I don’t like how Gene looks. Sorry Gene. No Sarain Gene Cuthand for me, although the genetic irony of it is kind of funny. I think I will just go with Sarain Cuthand. Period.

Speaking of periods, that’s one thing I WON’T miss. I’m just washing up some spotted laundry right now and thank god. I hate periods, not on other people, just my own. So messy! So expensive. It costs like, nine bucks worth of pads every time I have my period. Think of all the landfill the millions of women in Canada use just for period products! Not to begrudge women, who after all have to pay for all that soon to be landfill. There are reusable period products though, but I never got it together to do that kind of thing.

There was this one weird part when I was really crazy where I had total empathy for every living thing. I guess you could call that enlightenment but it was fuckin’ intense. I didn’t even want to swat mosquitos because I felt their pain too much. It’s hard for a meat eater to live with. I guess I should give up on Buddhism because the bacon calls my name. I can’t help it, I love bacon. I love bacon in the morning with blue berry pancakes.

One birthday I decided to make myself crepes, I think I turned 22 or something, and I decided I had to have ONE foolproof recipe for when I had a femme lover. So I made myself crepes and mimosas for breakfast that birthday, blueberry mango crepes. They were divine! I love crepes. Anyway, yes, I did get to use that recipe for a lover one morning, back when I was dating Amber Dawn, the Uber Femme. She was most appreciative. She made me gnocci in return, which was so good.

There’s something nice about making food back and forth between lovers, it’s intimate in a way that goes along with sex very nicely. Kind of like “well, we’ve been inside each other THAT way, now let’s be inside each other THIS way.” I don’t know how to describe it.

I think I’m getting that ugly duckling feeling every trans person has their first year. I know I’ll make a cute boy, I’m excited about that, but at the same time I feel sad and worry I won’t find someone who will want to be with that cute boy. Apparently this feeling is really common. Sadness!!! Then again, I am also just out of the hospital and sad about a weird thing that happened between myself and someone I was intimate with at one period in my life and anyway, yeah, it just makes me sad all around.

I don’t want to say too much about it, just that it turned out we both had one particular kink ever since high school and it looked like it might happen, then I fucked up and went crazy!!! Anyway, I still have this moose she gave me in high school. When I turned eighteen. I shouldn’t say I have it actually, For whatever weird reason I lent it to Adrian Stimson and he’s been so busy I haven’t been able to get it back yet until he returns from Calgary.

You know, the hospital really wasn’t so bad this time around. Sharing a room for two months sucked though, and I am sharing a room again in this home. I shouldn’t have to tell you why sharing a room sucks. I might be going to another home that does more proactive work in getting people back on their feet, but that depends on a lot of things, like if they will have space for one thing.

The snoring drove me spare one night. I have since acquired some ear plugs in case it happens again. And this time she used toilet paper but instead of putting it in the toilet where it rightfully belongs, it went into the trashcan BESIDE the toilet. EW!!!! That was just gross. and in the middle of the night she turned on a faucet and then left it running and went back to bed. I’m going to be so glad when she moves out at the end of the month. This is the same woman who took my medication AND her own one night. I can’t believe it! She’s so dotty, I think she must have dementia on top of whatever her issue is.

It’s true, we all have issues, but please put the tissues in the appropriate receptical.

I’m actually waiting for my doctor to decide I am stabilized mood wise for testosterone. It’s kind of like going through a cross between puberty and menopause, so waiting is a good idea in terms of mood.

It seems there is an FTM group that has regular meetings, but not in the summer. So I’m also waiting for Fall to arrive so I can start attending.

I also got a scholarship to go to the Banff Centre for the Arts this spring to work on a web project with video, so I am waiting for the middle of August to go off and be a professional artist instead of a professional nutter. And I have to write up a profile for myself for the Santa Fe screening, so that’s happening too. And basically I am also waiting around to find out when I can move into my new place this fall, which means I am also waiting around to find out when I need to put up a poster at the Avenue centre for a roommate. Whew! It’s a lot of waiting. Tonight I am waiting to go to the Harry Potter launch at McNally Robinson. I look sort of like Harry Potter, which is the funny part. I don’t know, I even have a scar on my face that I got when I was a baby, it was a slip during a caesarean section. I think I spelled that wrong. If I was up to my old self I would go and spell check that but I’m not.

I hated the idea of going into a care home, for a lot of reasons, but now I am kind of relieved I’m in one, for now, just because I realized how exhausted I am from being in the hospital. No way would I be able to do simple things like feed myself on time and do the laundry and clean, which is basically what I get being in the home. I’m not traumatized from the hospital this time, which is REALLY good. I was super traumatized in Montreal and this time I mostly had to deal with the shock of returning to the regular world. After a while you get used to relying on nurses and orderlies to tell people to be nice, and then suddenly it’s over, and you have to rely on the kindness of strangers, to borrow from Miss Dubois, in order to get through the world. No more being able to wander up to someone and say “That person is bothering me.”

That being said, no one is bothering me, except for the day I went to Bare Ass Beach with my Aunt Lori and someone started throwing around firecrackers. Even nine years of Vancouver Halloweens still doesn’t prepare me for trying to laze around in mid summer with firecrackers going off.

Then again Vancouver Halloween firecrackers have the leg up based in context. Everyone in Vancouver just KNOWS that firecrackers and fireworks go off on Halloween. It’s just a local tradition, and for as long as I lived there that’s the way things were.

Saskatoon still, to me, anyway, has this uncomfortable element of surprise. You’re never really TOO sure what will happen in Saskatoon, even though from the outside it seems like a same old kind of small city. Like the lights outside of town, I mean, what the hell were those? Someone suggested they were nature deities of some sort, which I can believe. And the incredible amount of ghost stories I have heard in this city are phenomenal. There’s something strange afoot in this town.

But what this city really needs to go on the map is a major film festival. Yorkton’s been running for ages, but Saskatoon really should have some kind of festival. I am trying to start one, but I’m pretty exhausted right now. And what with trying to find a producer for my film AND recovering AND transitioning AND applying for a big ass grant to do a documentary on my transition While charting the migratory roots of my genome, well, what’s a boy to do?

My mental health team are pretty impressed with how I’m coming along though, apparently I am recovering fairly fast. It’s the energy that I miss though. Not manic energy, just enough energy to get through the day, I keep napping, I don’t have much energy to go for walks or even play basketball. I’m losing weight though, which is a good thing. I have to wear a belt all the time and I’m going back to old pants that didn’t use to fit me.

Once I had to give away a pair of Gaultier pants because I didn’t fit them anymore, and I just about DIED! They were Gaultier!!! God I’m a fag.