written for Svara's Trans Halaxa Project
Sukkot, 5783
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Hag Sameache veryone, and a git yor. I hope all your etrogs smell wonderful when you sniff them and all your palm fronds bring down the rain when you shake them. I dont know about yall, but Sukkot has me thinking a lot about what it means to have a trans body, and a trans soul. Sukkos is an incredible chag. We create a temporary dwelling, live in it for a week, decorate it, come to love its leafy roof-cover and tarp-stretched walls (at least for mine). And we act like that’s all *new*. Like the dwellings we normally live in aren’t temporary. Like our normal roofs couldn’t blow away in the wind. Like our entire existence isn’t spent decorating homes, bodies, lives that will soon disassemble after the festival has run its course (please god, in our case, not in 9 days, but 120 years!) We know this already. I’ve spent a decade now re-decorating, struggling, growing, transforming, the sukkah that houses my soul. Hanging new ornaments from my earlobes, softening the contours of my walls. All bodies are sukkot. Our folk just just know how malleable and *possible* these structures can be. And how vital it is to live in them with creative authenticity, even as they will soon return to dust. Which reveals the essential truth of human life: That it is infinitesimal in the universal span. But yet somehow the universe craves it. Inexplicably, our soon-to-be-forgotten sukkot, and the intricate lives they hold (and then release), are the most beautiful things Hashem has ever made. I pray that as your hagim wind to a close, you remember that you are one deeply-craved sparkle in the Infinite Twinkle. May you live a-sukkah-of-a-life that reflects all the magic Hashem placed in you to manifest. Your sparkle will shine and fade - as it should. So will mine. If we give it our all, though, together we just might put on quite a show.