Year: 2016

Gratitude.

Erika Ginnis

Gratitude.
There’s a part of my heart that never aged.

Kept apart from the rest of my life, observing events, but not touched.

In amber…glowing golden, kept with other treasures, and memories.

Forgotten like so many things, that will reemerge at some predestined time when all is added back to us once more.

There’s a part of my heart that is still young, that is fresh and new and in awe.

(I had felt I had lost so much of it when Bowie passed, and now I see that there may be more than I knew.)

In me it blooms. Today I am reminded it was never lost.

No matter what the mirror reflects. I know now that I am not so old as I thought, and will never truly be, no one is…

I know now why the old men sit and reminisce, playing games in the park. 

I am reminded and renewed by reconnections and memories, coming to it from another place, with more understanding, the kind that only comes with age. 

Blessed am I, by my past. By the tender group of souls I came here with, some of them have moved on, and some of them, gratefully, are traveling with me still.

-Erika Katherine Ginnis

4-12-16
 from my yard 
 

Musings on coming out in the 70’s. I will miss you David Bowie. 

Erika Ginnis

I remember striped glitter tube socks worn with platform shoes 6 big sparkly bracelets on each arm, walking arm in arm with a woman in pike place market not caring if people saw, even daring them to see. I remember my silver satin pants, the pink sequin shirt.
Multicolored hair, six inch platform boots, hanging on to one another as we traversed the cobblestones of Pioneer Square, so we didn’t fall.

Going to the 107 Club until 4am; The Trojan Shield for the drag shows, applied our red lipstick looking in the mirror at the end of that long single counter of the all night diner in-between.

Dancing at the Golden Crown, since I couldn’t get into the Silver Slipper (no fake ID, and that bar checked because it was all women), I don’t know if I ever made it in to that bar!
I remember the posters for the Double Header advertising Zee Whizz Kidz in their peacock capes. Glitter Rock and Gay bars. My life every weekend hitchhiking to Seattle after I came out in the 70’s.
And on my wall at home the open inside cover of Alladin Sane.

My fan girl crush and my hero, the first person who I ever knew was bisexual other than me.

I would gaze at your image. Androgynous and beautiful, otherworldly and amazing. You represented so much to me, gave me courage in your visibility to ask the hard question of myself and finally find the answer at such a young age; as I bounced back and forth between acceptance and terror.

There you were giving it all a name just by being, making it shiny and worthwhile giving me something to lean against and point to, a belonging.

You moved through the years with me, always there to check in with on the state of music and culture. Reminding me of where I came from.

There aren’t many of us left from my days on Occidental, it’s all changed.

I will always love you, and today it feels like I have lost a part of myself, makes my journey from that teenage girl to the woman no one would recognize as being the same if seen from a distance, (age making its alterations) all that more real.

And I wonder who I am, who I have become; once again asking the hard questions with you as my guide even now…am I being true to my own muse as you were so very true to yours? No. I think perhaps not. And then … what do I want to do about it.

RIP my lovely starlit man. Keep me company in spirit until I too find my way to where you have gone.

Aloha and Blessings,

Erika