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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