BE A POEM
This last week, I carefully uprooted a young magnolia tree to move in a place it would thrive in the back near the garden. I fell on my ass laughing trying to dig a hole big enough to plant it into. The metaphor not lost on me. A close friend of mine commented this week on how we’ve been able to more deeply connect, wondering if that had been because of how physically supported I feel with secure housing, without financial burdens for this temporary season of recovery and a resounding yes yes yes. and i also wish everyone had this sense of stability that my mom supernaturally conjured through caregiving and someone else’s kindness—how i see wealth redistribution and mutual aid working. Life is so much more magical than I sometimes remember, especially when we band together. (note to self: try not to forget) It makes me think of that quote by Alexander Den Heijer “when a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
Something about belonging to a place and feeling like you're needed is the environment. Something about knowing we are all on the same page is part of conspiring together to build something new. Something about Albert Camus saying the only way to live in an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion and defines ‘rebel” as someone who says no but how saying no is not giving up, it’s also saying yes with every gesture. Something about how co star app sent me a notification that the self is a buried structure only revealed through the things it says no to or how adrienne maree brown says your no makes the way for your yes.
Something about Lama Rod Owens saying how we sometimes distrust healing because it means we have to imagine a different way of being in the world beyond our anger, woundedness, or despair. Something about how we’re all in our own unique orbits that sometimes intersect (side note: in 25,000 years, a unique birth chart will not repeat), how all of our fingerprints are different and how maybe that is on purpose. Something about how making space for disrupting my own indoctrination and trauma responses means making space for disrupting other’s indocrination and trauma responses. And something about how if we fear we cannot have those conversations to disrupt it, we can seek out tools that assist keeping perspective and effectively communicating because as Brene says people are hard to hate close up. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS NOT ASSUMPTIONS
Maybe it’s Leo season or maybe it’s reading “pleasure activism” but i am trying hard to lean into joy. Not just lean in, but intentionally make even a moment of it happen every day. And I’m reporting from the field to tell you this is the freaking way. gotta temper the heartache of paying attention. The truth of the matter is, as Dr. Rocio Rosales Meza points out, ALL OF CREATION CONSPIRED FOR YOU TO BE BORN. We weren’t just born to solely fight against a harmful heirarchies. We were born to create, to bring forth our unique gifts to help humxnity evolve. If all of our energy is tied up in the pain, what energy do we have to create? To heal? To be whole?
Since i wrote to you last, I traveled by train—I’m convinced this is the best way to travel— to the Chicago area to see a special family I love so much. Sharing meals and grabbing coffee just like we used to do together in my old neighborhood. Added a trip to the botanical gardens with an immersive butterfly habitat with my favorite six year old artist friend. I cried from happiness multiple times all the way back home because loving others opens you up to impermenance and somehow that’s a portal to deep presence with all the good shit life is offering.
Loving others also opens you to loving yourself. My favorite song from all of Mae’s special interest in musicals is “I know I deserve your love because there’s nothing I’m not worthy of.” Loving on myself has been coming easier these days, after many many days of it feeling only like a devotion to hard work. Like how after so many days practicing yoga with shaking planks or limited range leads to that one day you practice and you notice your legs move further than they did or the forming muscles in your arms find your bodyweight easy to hold. It’s rad to move beyond shaming myself to get back on the path every time I step off. As soon as I got back from Chicago, I ate hemp hearts for the first time BY THE SPOONFUL while loudly listening to whitney houston’s “greatest love of all”. The moment before that was talking to my mom about what flowers we could put in the yard within our window view. Sometimes love for yourself is just about imagining what nice thing you could do for yourself. Maybe typing out this newsletter is just a reminder.
RECLAIM YOUR INNATE BEAUTY AND WORTH AS A LUMINOUS CELL IN THE BODY OF HUMXNITY AND EARTH
FIELD NOTES //
anything adrienne maree brown says really, but this line especially, “If we hope to save our species, and to have human life on this planet, we have to learn from within how to live lives of satisfaction. We must practice how to move from a deep, sated, and respectful relationship to ourselves—in which we honestly articulate our needs and generate compassion for our choices—into a deep, satisfiable, and respectful relationship to anyone else.”
Thanks to the generosity of some dear friends (another way of practicing wealth redistribution), I’ve been taking these online, pre recorded classes from Wise Heart PDX on mindful compassionate dialogue & relationship compentency. Attracted mostly by the content on moving beyond reactivity and the practice of processing emotions & identifying underlying needs. Strong suggest as internal work for the revolution. If a class isn’t your style, they share some great blog posts, “just like you, each individual wants to be happy, to contribute, to live free from fear and pain.”
historically, gender variance is old as humanity and recognized as commonplace by many non-US cultures, some cultures siting up to six genders. the gender binary (meaning a system of only two distinct genders) is a relatively newer invention, established during european colonization of the US, why? theorized as a means to enforce divisive norms as a means for political, economic, & religious control. let’s throw in nationalism in there for good measure. PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR OWN INDOCRINATION BC THERE ARE LOTS OF WEIRD ASS LAWS HARMING NON CONFORMING CHILDREN WHO SHOULD BE FREE IN THEIR BODIES.
Speaking of the myth of gender, I recently watched Katie Couric’s Gender Revolution on disney +. It’s not perfect but it’s a good baseline for info. This morning, I watched Intersexion, a documenary about intersex existence on amazon prime. Brave huemxns sharing their stories about “medicalized” genital mutilation in an effort to interrupt the made up construct causing more harm than good for all of us.
a bit from Shauna Niequist’s “I guess I haven’t learnt that yet” a friend sent me
I have such a heart for young people in this time and all they’re carrying. My favorite magic makers at the Reframe Collective are offering this beautiful 10 month long supportive & connective co hort for young people between 10-15 called The Rainbow School to help them stand in their power. I’m so into this. Also we recently watched a recording of a play Mae did with Reframe from just before the pandemic hit, and one line of a song is haunting my brain, “gonna need diversity to get through this adversity” YESSS.
a text exchange between me and the aforementioned six year old friend, sunset pics at the exact same moment because magic is real.
Mae and I got really into all the marvel movies and tv series in the last few years. We recently finished the series Ms Marvel and I have to share two solid lines from the series finale: “just because they’re making you the enemy doesn’t mean you need to make them yours.” & “there is no normal. all we have is us and what we’ve been given.”
this unedited and imperfect issue of ALICE is released this way in an efffort to decolonize grammar and invite tthe reader to use their intellect to understand what i mean to say when the uncapitalized i types “tthe” and means “the” and inquire within at what compels you to police written language. I dedicate these issues to remind myself of the people who have gone before me and done much bigger things for the movement of social justice rooted in a love ethic. This particular issue I’m dedicating to this sweet faced 14 year old boy Emmett Till (pictured left, below), who’s life was taken at the hands of what we can name as the delusional thinking of white body supremacy, catering to the manipulative victim complex that is gaslighting in the subculture of white women who have also been gaslit by patriarchal conditioning especially. (something to consider & be mindful of. . .how abuse begets abuse ) May the Till family receive justice and may this young baby’s death, like so many of these children dying (THOUGH THEY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO), assist in seeing with wide eyes the unncessary harm caused so we may disrupt, change, eradicate it and not only protect our children but give them a future to believe in and hope for. MAY WE CARE FOR OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER IN THE SPIRIT OF COMMUNION. i love you. keep going. thanks for reading.