Alison Bechdel is My Hero

Alison Bechdel is My Hero

Notes on remembering, forgetting, and learning.

A place to put my thoughts.. too many of them all the time. Not good enough, not formed enough, not old enough. I’m not learning anything here. I know I will, I am. I learned a lot in New York, I think. But what is learning really? I sound silly. Is it remembering? I start to remember when I learn, I remember when I study someone’s movement and it opens a world inside of me. Alison Bechdel wrote something about making the unknown known. Her comics show the life and movement of lesbians.. In Fun Home there is a moment where we see young Alison watch in amazement as a masculine woman walks into the diner her and her dad were sitting at, “I recognized her with a surge of joy”.

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Earthseed

Earthseed

I got a tattoo last week. It’s the word “Earthseed” on my upper right arm. The tattoo is referencing work by Octavia E. Butler, a science fiction writer who dreamed up (or remembered?) what would be left after capitalism has devastated the planet. I read her book Parable of The Sower in the midst of the pandemic, in the midst of mass death as a result of the centering of profit over human life.

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Mutual Aid as a Practice in Love

Mutual Aid as a Practice in Love

I was recently asked why I got involved in mutual aid. My answers were the same as they have always been, it’s the end of the world and we need to take care of each other, it is a part of my politics, and a natural (human) response to crises. All of these things are very much true, and they all center me and my orientation in this moment of time. However, there is a piece of mutual aid that I’ve failed to name, but one that I feel deeply through the most sacred parts of my body.

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