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.

found he(art).

photo by Peggy Dyer
peggydyer.com

Some things are intentionally left behind. The trash cans are overflowing on this side of the states and one wonders why we don’t twist more metal into deepened cups where all this refuse can go.

But one person’s remains is another’s shelter or supper or scraps for what will one day be a coffee table or bookshelf. On the corner of Utica and Carroll, notice the umbrella cemetery. They huddle like stretched out bodies but maybe they can be refurbished as waterproof leg warmers.

Alternate your pattern of looking. The sky offers many rewards, but so does this ground. Here in Brooklyn, garbage can woo you. Stop and notice the plastic muscle beating on the sidewalk. How beautiful is this litter and does it make you want to search out another human to give it to?