.: welcome 2 my twisted ankle :.
-- a personal website about my life & interests --
hi im cedar (he/him), a queer, disabled artist originally from the midwest USA. my handles online are usually idleseas or sometimes rattiebastard, though horce-divorce has been my Tumblr for a number of years now!
I live in my van with my partner and 3 cats, & we have been traveling the country for 2.5 years in search of friends, community, and a place where we belong.
Being gay, transgender, and antifascist on top of being homeless and disabled is an intersection of identities and experiences I think are important!
I'm incredibly proud to be who- and even where- I am. I am not ashamed to talk about being homeless or chronically ill, and neither is my partner.
Now more than ever, I think its important for our art to reflect this stuff, and serve as a record for future generations about what it was like to be alive in our time.
I have enjoyed playing with code since I was a kid designing webpages for my Neopets in the early aughts.
This is one of the few hobbies I've been able to take with me no matter how much I've moved around.
My laptop is old, the software is outdated, the keys are falling off, the battery needs replaced, its full of crumbs and hair and who knows what else-- and it still boots up and runs Neocities just fine. Some places online are the only home I've ever truly been able to go back to.
I'm gonna make this website into a little museum of my life, my art, my interests, my stories and essays, and stuff I like and which is important to me. It always was, and still is, just a fun hobby... but also, now more than ever I think it's important to tell me & my partner's stories.
We make the best that we can of our little life, but living in our car is not all that the #vanlife trend has made it out to be. Especially as GNC transgender men who do not pass, and especially as homeless disabled folks, our lifestyle comes with a great amount of danger.
A lot of lies are being told about us & our communities right now. The more of us that can speak out & share our truths, the better... even if its only for posterity.
Testing a link in a normal paragraph.
⚧︎
lord give me the HRT
to change the things I can,
and the THC to accept the things I can't
⚧
what about this?
born in a graveyard
raised by a witch
half motherfucker
half son of a bitch!!!
I first learned how to code on Neopets... and to be quite honest, I don't know much more about it now than I did then, but I enjoy playing with HTML and CSS for some reason, and was thrilled to see Neocities emerge when it did. I dabble in lots of different art forms; photography, drawing/painting and tattoo design, pixel art, knitting, crochet, embroidery, jewelry-making and beading, sculpting, collage. With food and crafts alike, I'll try most anything once!
I actually ran a semi-successful online art store for a while and have long wanted to go back to it, but being homeless really complicates things. I also used to make a living as an indepdent contractor, freelancing transcription & captioning for various companies (I type a batshit insane 130wpm on avg and I am really proud of it). I really enjoyed this and it's the closest I've ever had to a career or profession, and I would still be doing it, if AI hadn't replaced me. (I could still be doing it- if your YT channel, podcast, tv show/production, office etc needs transcrciption or accurate, human closed captions for media, hire a real transcriptionist - me!)
I am a leftist, don't believe in hierarchies or borders, abolitionist and anti-assimilationist. I believe in landback, and my own deeply spiritual connection to the elements (and especially to the Great Lakes) and my experiences being affected by climate change are just some of what inform that - plus an intense desier to see cycles & systems of abuse finally be broken down, and to see power, wealth, and resources equitably dispersed. Children are the most oppress class, life always matters over profit, none of us is free until all of us are.
My partner & I have been homeless together for 2.5 years, searching tirelessly for community, a place where we can really settle and call home. A place where people not only respect one another's autonomy, personhood, boundaries, and perspectives, but where we can share with each other, help one another, and enrich all of our lives in the process. We hope that, someday, that place will be everywhere, and there will be no outcasts, forcced to travel for thousands of miles just to stay safe and find resources... Maybe we won't live to see that day, but we can make it real for each other now!
A Leedol Bit About Me...
- My boyfriend and I are both GNC, nonbinary transgender men, & we are both disabled with a lot of the same conditions (which kinda makes sense as our families come from the same region).
- I met my boyfriend in the woods!!! ♡ 06/30/2023 ♡ t4t is heaing me, queer love is sacred!!!
- I volunteered in wildlife rehabilitation for about 1.5 years- both with the Wisconsin Humane Society and with a bat specialist- and it was some of the most rewarding work I've ever done!!
- I have a ~rare disorder~ called MALS, a type of vascular compression, that took 10+ years and countless doctors and tests to diagnose. doctors won't touch it & told me to smoke weed about it
- I have lived in 5 US states & 5 different major cities + dozens of smaller rural areas; I have moved from house-to-house about 30 times, and while living in my vehicle with my partner, we have parked or camped overnight in more than 50 different locations. And not because it's fun
- My partner & I have traveled ~ 5,000mi and counting together in our home on wheels and while couch-hopping
- We have three cats! They are very special and good kitties, if they were any of the other cats I've had in my life, they could not be van cats. These guys are our little roaddogs and they're so good
- I got to see MCR four times before they broke up, back in the day when concert tickets were actually affordable on minimum wage