Leave now if you don't like people tearing off on occasionally self-righteous #%*#&%* sessions.

This rant is for Sept 5th, 2001.

I'm mute.

No, not physically, as those who have heard the slightly flatter grumping growl of my voice can attest. It's where it counts that I can't talk, or if I dare to do so it's in whispers in the corners and roars breaking free at inopportune timings.

People who read me know I'm chronic. I'm the jerk who sticks her nose where it doesn't belong and riffs off long speels on stuff that no one thinks I can even start to imagine. I'm your middle girl, demanding too much and giving nothing back for your time. Scorpions stinging the foxes that are their rides from floods--yes, that's me.

But that's the case so far as the appearance. No, let's be more accurate. It's the case so far as the translation goes.

I really should have a diplomat with me at all times, and that's one of the many fun things about plurality that I *can*--or, if you want to be even simpler about it, about being alive and using your superego or your wisdom or your restraint. Do I, though? No. I've given in to the illusion that I can say what I personally want to while using my own self-moderational judgment. I choose to hope that my intentions will shine through more strongly than my ragged words, for otherwise why would I be interested in trying to stand for the idea of plurality as a possible positive state of being?

But I can't talk, just in case I don't have the right keyword for the situation. I can't say anything without it being gone over by two dozen folks to make sure that it won't strike some person out there as implying something it's not, and by that time it doesn't have half the impact of what I want to say anymore. When I do, I must be mute. That, or I end up coming across as gods-know-what, because I want to spend my time talking about the idea instead of double-checking every word to see if it just might offend an infinity of possibilities in others. And I so very need a life, because it does grate on me if I've done an injustice wrong by fluked degree.

Doesn't stop me from strewing about careless words left and right though, does it? Hah, and here and there goes that feeling again of the way you must be in order to fit into a strata--a group? a genre?--where the biggest rule of thumb is supposed to be that nothing has to fit in in order to be all right to exist.

Lord (Lords, lords, ladies, blessed chicks who ride the moon and thumb their noses at me, and my former pet cat) let there be those who understand that I don't ride sidesaddle on these trails, but I'm still in the same pack of hunters as all the rest of you when it comes to the elusive prey that's societal acceptance.

For words are what are endless frustrations here, not because they aren't my native language--for they are--but because nearly everything under the sun these days has become a label. Do I use the choice of group or of household when I try to talk about plural organizations of people in general? I know that we Courts aren't a household under any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not about to bridle and throw accusations at others should they turn that word towards us. Nor will I ask them to change. Other people will use the strings of letters that equates an idea in their minds for them; where they might use system, I might use group, but I understand that we are essentially talking about the same thing.

To an extent, yes--words are deadly, and they are what have kept us in the place drilled out for us over the years. Disease. Disorder. Fragments. Fictions. However, they are also means to facilitate communication with any number of connotations attached to them for each individual in a--what should I say here again? Structure, family, nation? Kingdom, household, affiliation? I can't even finish a train of thought without stumbling over if others will seek to slap me for accidentally using a word they might not prefer.

For a while, 'alter' was used as a replacement word for 'person who does not seem to have been in the body from birth and who might not fit that body as it is physically defined.' The connotations which went with that were negative; they titled a primary person as real and alternates as choices that were not as central. Now alter is being slowly phased out, though it resurfaces by degrees. Still, the role that it played to sum up that long and convoluted phrase was a necessary one for communication, and I'll stand by and respect it for that even as I so very much detest the implications that rode with it.

Inner, Outer, Other, Between. We don't have yet an official lexicon recognized for the least amount of offense it grants that I can draw from when I want to pin down these thoughts of mine in offering to another. Rebekka's group, Rebekka's Court, the Courts, a Court, the Cats, Rebekka's Cats, the Court with Rebekka in it. How are you going to send things back if you want to address me? Are you too going to just pick one and hope with bated breath that luck won't have granted you something that I'd growl at it being pointed in my direction?

Hoi, if you're fine with me and everyone else in here who wants to be real *as* real, then you can call me just about anything you want. I'll trust in your intentions as I can see them come alight, when you're standing here with me and we're both looking to the same horizon line.

And in the meantime, these words are killing us.

Right. I'm making a team of translators now, and then I'm going to ship them out across the world and beyond in crates marked 'This Way Up.' Particularly ones who can somehow phrase things well enough that no one takes offense that I've used that verb at all, in an implication that people can be put together like Legos. Let's hope. I want us all to win and stand there proud at the end of being just as much plural as we want to be, whether that's a lot or a little. Let's hope for it. Someday I'll find the right words scrubbed clean and sparkling for me to use to say that right. I'll hope for that too.