Day and Night

I stayed awake last night to finish reading Her Fearful Symmetry and before I knew it, it was 5:30AM and the sun was on its way up. I watched the sunrise with my coffee in hand and then embarked on an early morning run. The weather was beautiful when I left, only 69 degrees. By the time I was back at my house, it had gone up ten degrees. Still beautiful but hot and humid.

My runs have been going well. I'm running with much more ease these days and am trying to listen to my body when it tells me to take a day off. My lower back has been bothering me for the last few days because of the minor difference in the lengths of my legs. I think I have finally fixed the issue though by putting a small insert into my left shoe under the heel. My weight seems to be more evenly distributed now when my feet hit the ground. My goal is to try and increase my running pace over the next few weeks. I would like to be able to pull an eight or nine minute mile.

There were some delicious vegan eats in my life today. For lunch, I had leftover Chinese vegetable bean curd (tofu) with rice. I ended up adding some sweet and spicy barbecue sauce to the mix (sounds gross but it wasn't, I swear) because the remaining food I had left was a bit dry. It turned out really delicious.

For dinner, I had a break from cooking, as my mother decided to make a vegan-friendly meal. She had purchased some TVP (textured vegetable protein) for me a few weeks ago and decided to use it tonight in a spicy red bean and rice dish. Besides the TVP, red beans, and brown rice, we also mixed in onion, cayenne pepper, and a bit of garlic for flavoring. Yum! Good job, Mom!

And that's about it for today. I'm moving on to reading a new book tonight and am going to try my hardest to sleep and wake up for another early morning run. Hope this finds you well.

recent.

Visibility

A couple of weeks ago on July 17th, Angie Zapata, a MTF transgender, was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Angie had been on a date with Allen Andrade, a man she had met on a dating website, when Andrade noticed photographs around Angie’s apartment and questioned her gender identity. Upon discovering that she was a transwoman, Andrade beat Angie until he thought that he had killed her. When he realized that she was still alive and barely breathing, he continued to beat her until she finally died, fleeing the scene in Angie’s car.

Unfortunately, crimes like this are not uncommon. Everyday, members of the transgender community suffer from discrimination, exclusion, hate and violence. A large part of society does not recognize the challenges that transgender people face on a daily basis. Imagine fearing for your safety in a public restroom. Having someone judge your every move. Being fired from a job simply because of who you are. Visibility needs to be brought to the transgender community. Our society needs to recognize the treatment of transgender people and the rights that they are frequently denied.

What struck me about the story of Angie Zapata’s death is that when Allen Andrade was caught by the police, he explained what he had done, claiming that he had “killed it.” IT. He referred to Angie Zapata as IT. Not as a woman, a transwoman, or a human being but IT, a word used to represent an inanimate thing.

I cannot imagine any circumstance in which it is okay to call another human being IT. And so, I did this photo to bring about an issue that I think needs our attention. There needs to be greater punishment and attention given to hate crimes that occur on the basis of sexual and gender identity. There also needs to be an expansion of visibility and understanding of the transgender community. We need to educate our children, each other, and ourselves to think outside of the gendered boxes.

Photos

I feel the need to follow up that vlog (in which I look like a crazy lady with eccentric makeup) with a post proving to you that I really was only like that for a photoshoot. So, for you that do not follow my Flickr photostream, here are some of the photos I took of myself today. Enjoy, my friends! And yes, I am hot.