Tag: family

516: “Emphasis on Personality” (Chana Porter)

                “Trina moved into performance, both sound and video, involving her own body in the practice. She got a little bit famous and had some minor love affairs, made Deeba proud of her celebrity wife. Then she got bored of the art world; of its pageantry, its emphasis on personality.”
-Chana Porter, The Seep, p. 14

                Almost a decade ago (wow! Time sure washes along) I wrote about Julie Lythcott-Haims and the way passions are commodified into something we have to find—and perhaps sell. Six months ago my partner and I read Chana Porter’s The Seep. And I laid in bed, wondering if cults of individuality lead in part to this dead-end emphasis on personality.
                These days that’s often staged on social media: the influencer’s brand, and how whatever else they’re selling—investment software or skincare serums—they’re selling them. Their energy, fast and larger than life, homey and honest. I think it long predates social media: think of Hollywood stars. Think of celebrity artists. Think of politicians. Think of me, a teacher, told to develop my “teacher persona” and consolidate it into something authoritative and approachable and boundaried and wise and easy to understand and consumable. If individuals are so important, the most important thing around, then a distinct personality has to mean something.
                For me, I think, it means very little. I’ve been reading Moses Ose Utomi’s novellas, but I don’t think it’s his personality that I love. In part it’s the way his imagined world pulls at, reveals, and complicates the world I imagine to be true. In part its the sensory rhythm of sounds. And in person—well, is it really my friend’s personality I’m drawn to, the performance of a particular self? I think it’s more specific: this conversation. This walk together. This game. And more general: this shared gentle silence in which we care for each other. It’s at once more action and more being, and less a pageantry of self.

by Azlan

509: “Become Slow” (Thích Nhất Hạnh)

                “Breathing in, I notice that my in-breath has become deep. 
                Breathing out, I notice that my out-breath has become slow. 
                Deep, slow. 
                Enjoy.”
                -Thích Nhất Hạnh, in this guided meditation

                A long time ago, in trying to help her two kids stay calm and engaged on long car rides, my mom brought along cassette tapes of guided meditations from Thích Nhất Hạnh. I don’t think I remember them. But I absolutely remember being told how much we objected to them. It’s part of our family lore: my mom puts in the tape, and then young voices from the backseat are shouting no, no, we don’t want this tape, turn it off.
                All that makes me smile. Perhaps because, one, as life goes along I connect more and more with my mom, trying to support her kids as they shout back nos (which she listened to, by the way—turning off the tape, though I think she tried again after a while). And two, because I recognize the love in it, the love that tries and struggles and offers and sometimes doesn’t go how you expected (and keeps trying). And three, because my partner and I just shared the Thích Nhất Hạnh guided meditation linked above. Listening to his voice—I was wrong, I do remember it, as we remember childhood before the actions and images of storied memory—I enjoy breathing. Enjoy it like leaves drinking in the sun. Enjoy it as lungs sipping at the sky.
                Breathing in, I notice that my in-breath has become deep. 
                Breathing out, I notice that my out-breath has become slow. 
                Deep, slow. 
                Enjoy.
                I love how some seeds take a long time to grow.

by Azlan

506: “Mi Vida Les Agobia” (Alaska y Dinarama)

“Mi vida les agobia
¿Por qué será?”
[My life overwhelms them—
And why is that?]
                -Alaska y Dinarama, “A Quien Le Importa”

                My love and I have been watching La Casa de las Flores (The House of Flowers), mostly because it’s so much wild fun, and so good to lie down and snuggle at the end of the day. Last night the third episode finished with my favorite scene so far. A young man coming out to his family takes advice from a queer performer, and so sings his coming out. But (as his sisters remind us, when he stands up to start) he’s no singer. The show’s filming blends from the awkward, uncertain beginning of his song to a color-washed version of the same performance, the young man shifting from hesitating to alight. From awkward to alive. And then we go back to the first, reserved version. The bright version was “in his head,” you might say. (In that version both his parents are joyful, supportive). Or maybe we were seeing for a little while with our hearts and our hopes and our delights.
                I love when art blends these two: a world “a camera might capture,” you could say (though it’s not that simple), and a world inside. Blends them, and shows how interconnected they are. Last year I learned that broadleaf plantains are edible, and so these days I walk around the neighborhood, and where before I saw weeds, weeds, weeds, I see foods, salads, delights.

by Azlan

505: “It’s Easier To Do This When You’re Here” (Travis Baldree)

                “No, it’s not that. […] It’s that it’s easier to do this when you’re here. And that makes me feel stupid. Have I been sitting on my tail all this time? Doing nothing because I was pretending I couldn’t? Am I so pathetic that I couldn’t muster the energy to do this without…without a chaperone?”
                -Travis Baldree, Bookshops and Bonedust, p. 73

                A few days ago, my friend (and found family) Fin and I went for a walk, pattering our feet to a nearby park and around beneath the branches. Then we came back as a storm blew in, and pulled up dandelions from a garden bed till big spring drops plopped over us. A week or two ago Fin and I learned about the fuse box in my new house, and turned off electricity so we could repair a light switch and an outlet. Both of those were tasks I’ve been meaning to do for weeks (or months). I was a little worried about doing them with Fin. “I don’t want to put this on you,” I Said, or something like that. Fin, wonderful human that they are, smiled and said, “It’s fun! And we’re learning stuff!”
                As Travis Baldree’s character is learning on page 73, I think it’s easier to do stuff when you’re here. But I’m moving to a place where that doesn’t make me feel stupid. Usually when I say “work” these days, I mean something somewhat ugly, tied up in capitalism and social structures that destroy too much. But work can also be what we do toward the world we want to share. Doing that kind of work with someone makes the effort—and the world we’re moving toward, whatever world that is; the well-lit room with a working light switch where we’ll sit and eat orange slices—feel closer. Taste sweeter. Stay shared.

by Azlan

504: “Taunted by Tigers” (Baker & Nephew)

                “…was taunted by tigers. You’re not the ringleader this time.”
                -Keither Baker and Michelle Nephew, Gloom (Second Edition)

                My family’s been visiting this last week, and in between cooking and washing dishes and lounging on the floor we’ve been playing games. Especially Gloom. Have you played that one? Each player is a kind of guiding ghost for an ill-fated family, and your goal is to get the characters in your family as miserable as possible—and then safely dead—while everyone else’s characters remain “happy, healthy, and annoyingly alive” (from the rulebook). And we’ve laughed. Laughed and laughed. I think part of the game’s fun, for me at least, is how it takes up the “good” and “bad” events that tropes imagine for us. Characters get happier (a bad thing, when you’re playing the game) when they do things like inherit money or get “wonderfully well wed” or are blessed by the pope. Characters get more miserable (a good thing) when they get hurt or “grow old without grace” or are “menaced by mice.” It’s all, in a way, exactly how you’d expect, except the goals are reversed. 
                In my day-to-day I avoid washing dishes, rushing along to the moment when I can “relax” by watching TV or whatever all else. I make my plans and try to stick with them. And then this week my plans are interrupted and bent and tumbled over with visiting family, and there’s something tiring in that, for sure, but there’s also something lovely. Gloom mocks my expectations for what’s supposed to happen. And it’s nice not to be the ringleader this time.

by Azlan

503: “Evade and Avoid” (Alexis Pauline Gumbs)

                “What I know is that I love you. Even if you are not interested in being followed. Even if you show up in disguises. Even if I’m not the one who should know you or name you or classify you at all. And I celebrate your right to evade and avoid me. I celebrate your journey however deep, however long. I respect you as so much bigger than my own understanding. And me too. I don’t have to be available to be eligible for breath.”
                -Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, p. 92

                For a while now (a year? More?) I’ve been wondering where it is that Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes about loving whales, even when they choose to stay out of sight, beneath the surface, far from her. And then today in looking through Undrowned for a different section these lines swam past me. And I thought yes. I felt yes. 
                I think I felt yes because so much of my training, my learning, my community-tending is about learning things. Seeing things. Being introduced to people. But just yesterday a dear friend talked about the peace and joy and life that comes from keeping their distance from certain people that they don’t want to be close to, and I felt, yes.
                I think I felt yes because I’ve been feeling the ocean of the sky blow with lightning and thunder out here in the plains. A little while I tried to imagine how big a storm is. Imagine prairie and forest and hill until it stretched out that far. And then I remembered Undrowned and realized to feel a storm I could step outside. Hear one little breath of blowing, and see the towering clouds washed up, deep beyond my seeing. 
                I think I felt yes because I want more learning and organizing that’s about respecting and celebrating the distances and disguises and evasions that breathing creatures choose.

by Azlan

500: “Welcome Comfort” (Becky Chambers)

                “And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.”
                -Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

                One of the fun parts about this project is that people start sharing their favorite quotes with me.
                Years ago my friend and I sat talking about kids, and how we both thought that no one really knows a kid’s gender until they’re old enough to start saying, “This is me.” I said that meant I didn’t know what to do. What to say. My friend, trans and mid transition, started telling me about cool picture books with gender diverse kids. We talked about one (I can’t find it now! Someone tell me the name!) with a kid who’s picking out all sorts of different outfits—shorts one day, a dress another, a dragon costume another. If the kid feels themself in the book, they can say, I’m like that. If not it’s still a fun story about fun people.
                Lately, when people tell me about the art they’re loving, I’ve been thinking about that book. About how so many of us are looking around for the yes or the maybe or the bright that helps us share what we’re experiencing, and so come closer in the ways we want to.
                My younger sibling called me this morning. They asked, “At what point do you quit?” They’ve been planning a certain path for the next few years, and they’re not sure anymore if their plan feels livable. They called again tonight, just back from running around in the rain with some friends. They sounded a lot happier. We chatted. I told them I was struggling with an uproar draft, and they gave me Becky Chambers’ quote. I wondered if this welcome, friendly, relationship-woven comfort was something they were reaching for, given where they were. In the picture book, in the way of picture books, looking for what we need, for what feels right, plays out in something colorful and touchable. All those clothes. In my life, that looking often plays out with people and words and art. Tired and snuggled next to my partner, because it’s still chilly where we love, I wondered if that welcome, friendly, relation-woven comfort was something we’ve also been needing. It’s wonderful how our reaching for what makes us possible can help make our loved ones possible, too.

by Azlan

498: “Long-Distance Love” (Ishita Dharap)

                “The Long-Distance Love-Letters program has been rescheduled to take place on Sat, February 22, 2 pm, at Krannert Art Museum.” -Ishita Dharap, in an email sent out this afternoon

                I messaged my dear friend Ishita on December 2nd, inviting her to come over and enjoy dinner and a cozy fire. She was in India with her family, she said, and she sent a picture of a truly delicious dinner that I would’ve loved to share. I met her family once. We talked about joy and rest and becoming an interwoven family as leaves rustled overhead and the stars came out in a deepening sky.
                Ishita and I messaged each other again on January 3rd, looking for a moment to catch up, but we wouldn’t be back in the same town until January 12th. Then things were busy. Now it’s mid February. Whenever we catch up, my friend, it won’t be soon enough—and at the same time, all this—and her email today—has me thinking about how the joy and curiosity and support of our friendship isn’t something put off to that scheduled moment where we can see each other in the craziness of our current political moment. That joy and curiosity and support is already woven all through: long distance love, sweet and playful and sad as we say hello from close and far away.
        I haven’t been to Ishita’s Long Distance Love-Letters museum program. Not yet. But I’ve seen her write about it (in a book and a journal article), I’ve talked with her about it, and in imagining it I’ve felt it. Maybe that’s because I’m thousands of miles away from so many of the people I love. Maybe that’s because the stories I often hear told about “long distance” are about missing, about absence. Ishita’s work makes me think back through all the ways that missing and remembering are kinds of touching and playing and learning and being together. It helps me feel that so many of my beloved absences are presences, day after day, in so many ways.

by Azlan

493: The Fox Maidens (Robin Ha)

                “When I first conceived of this graphic novel about Gumiho, I thought it would be a fun, action-packed, fantastical thriller, full of cool scenes for me to draw. Now, I realize that what I’ve actually made is a book about generational trauma.” -Robin Ha, author’s note to The Fox Maidens

                bell hooks writes (in Teaching to Transgress) about going to education in the hopes of being healed. Sitting with that and with Robin Ha, I realize something similar is one of my favorite magics of fiction. We can set off writing, reading, imagining on our way to excitement: toward fantastical thrillers and wondrous adventures and cool scenes and clever lines. And carried along by the excitement of snows and wintry peaks, of magic and holding fire, we can find families, friends, loves. We can stumble openly into the hurts we are and heal, sometimes alone, sometimes together.
                There are so many stories that heal me. Lately I think I’ve slipped back toward thinking about stories largely as entertainment (which they can be), or about philosophical presentations of what the world is and should be (which they can be). Reading Robin Ha, I feel story as red skin, a burn, tender and regenerating. So much is burning, scorching so many of us. Here in The Fox Maidens is a healing breath we breathe together.

by Azlan

492: “The Word ‘We'” (Divya Srinivasan)

                “And Little Owl thought how he loved the word ‘we.’”
                -Divya Srinivasan, Little Owl’s Love

                My partner and I just got back home, pulling into our shadowed driveway and waking up our sleepy chilly house, after a long visit out to family in Washington State. We solved puzzles with our grandpa and great aunt. We cooked with both of our moms, and made pot holders with one of them and with our nieces. We played games with our siblings. Different collections of family went out for walks to a frog pond, and walks beneath evergreens, and somewhere along the way I started making friends with a cedar tree. A small one, probably a little younger than I am. It chuckles nighttime thoughts in nighttime whisperings.
                And oh yes, we read Divya Srinivasan’s Little Owl’s Love with our nieces. My partner read it first to the kiddos, and then found me on the couch and said, “You’d love this one,” And I did. That was the day before a whole family of raccoons went climbing along the fence, I think. So many of the stories I saw around me as I grew up told me that life was an individual thing. Remembering back through all these sweet collections of growing things, I do so love the word we.

by Azlan