lozenger8*tumblr*com/post/152915062474/wave-on-seashell-stunning-gardens felt v genderfluid Niall to me and made me think of you. if you wanted to, do you have gender thoughts abt these photos? :)
alex pleeeease, you are such a ray of sun. this post makes me sooooo warm and you thinking of it and me, even moreso. i’ve had this post favorited for like 10 years, did you know. it’s so soft. i love all of these, just personally, because i’m a big fan of the idea of letting green overtake industrial eggshell, the active incorporation of growth into a base design, rather than a hindrance or an uncommon happenstance.
i think, what draws me, and some other folks to genderfluid niall, is maybs that this niall also is a fan of these things. and with that, that genderfluid niall would want, most assuredly for gender to be a home curation made on the stoop of the back porch or the marble of the kitchen counter. niall would want to tie it to home and safety and affirmation.
and this particular genderfluid niall is wide sturdy walls. built blank and wide open, exposed. and not quite suddenly, the air and rain coming along and whispering encouragement to small seeds to put their hands into the planes and throw life to the sky. gender can be so much like that. gender can so much be niall having firmly decided a thing that’s a little vulnerable, a little protected in the common rules of architecture,
and then seeing a sprinkle of color, a sprout of life. and niall doesn’t know the name of it, or what it could be, but there’s so much ease and hope in letting it stretch across the beams of arms and bones, in letting it wake up loud, a world around, in letting the wind rush through fingertips and feeling like a vine swimming in the sun.
there’s a different kind of strength in a self that grows and grows and layers life after life over itself; gender flipping through years and aesthetics and identities, the truth in the unchanging change - fluidity. there’s a might in the unignorable boldness of it, the simple matter-o-fact of it’s rooted existence. niall wearing shirts that say TRANS or niall jingling bracelets in four colors or niall casually responding to “how are you” with “gender’s fucked today, mate. how’s the missus?”
because in certain situations, in certain sureties, it’s so safe to be unsure and to share that with others who are unsure.
sometimes, sometimes though, it’s quieter. it’s going home to yourself to find things where you left them, and new things along side them.
because fluidity can also be familiarity, can be niall building an intimacy with niall and niall’s gender, knowing what it feels like to wear heeled boots on a tuesday and to feel something beyond the binary of “_ to _.” knowing, so intimately all the ins and outs of how gender feels in the chest and in the music of a assured, “yes.” niall builds spaces that are known, and then looks for more, looks for things to keep it more.
going out and thinking about gender, bringing it home in a bottle and watering it in the window, stringing gender from the tops of the ceilings, niall hugging niall. it’s an affirmation of sorts, to take things like plurality, makeup, euphoria, hormones - and settle them into their spaces in your life and expect them to evolve, to grow flowers or wilt in the rainy season.
it takes a lot of courage, niall’s hands against harsh walls, counting breaths, niall’s voice like rocks into shallow ponds of conversations, ripples through relationships that have always been static and smooth, cameras trying to peek over the wall’s of niall’s life, the will of niall’s fortitude. but the thing about a gender you come home to, is that it always whispers, “welcome back.”
genderfluid niall is the niall that finds gender familiar and also beautifully, breathtakingly surprising. which is rather inspiring, really.
