clarity.

“i think i’m who i think i am” 

This was found on a wall type-written on fabric on a street called Dean in Brooklyn on a walk beside a poet who noticed it at almost the same time and while the poet photographed, I thought of all the ways these eight words mean something.

Perhaps one often wonders: what am I, really?

Perhaps there is a sense of: What is felt is what one really is.

I’ve got all these phantom feelings. Ghost gender. I think I am something invisible to others.

Several evenings ago, a human came up to me after a performance and they asked what led me to what I wrote. They wanted to know who it was about. I say: me.

They immediately looked at my chest and I tried not to notice. I was unbound, yet covered by shirt and vest. They said: But I don’t understand. What you wrote about….well….I’d have expected you to have bound your breasts or something.

My chest inhaled deeply at that moment. I began to defend my (momentarily) unbound chest, but stopped.

I announced again: It was about me. Bodies are complicated and don’t always need to defend inconsistencies. 

I think I’m (still figuring out) who I think I am. I think I may always be. I think there is something deeply impactful about giving ourselves permission to change our minds about how our bodies/gender/heart/voice/skin/mind/… make us feel. I think I may never figure all of me out. But that should never stop us from continuing the translation.