the other day this beautiful person i didn’t know called me sister & talked to me about the book i was reading. at first i recoiled & slightly panicked. most of the time people are so rude to me in public — when they do acknowledge me it’s to make fun of me, call me a freak, or make me into some spectacle. i have become conditioned into a constant state of fear — i know how to avert eyes, how to make myself as small as possible, how to squirm my way out of crowds & camera lenses. but i reminded myself that there is something else out there for me & for us so i looked up & i said hello. i was having a bad day of harassment & this person just talking to me about my book...and not like my appearance or my gender...felt so precious & unfamiliar & refreshing that when they left i just teared up. it’s these fleeting gestures that keep me afloat — the delicacy of people i do not know but still love. the poetry in motion: the art practice of intimacy. that refusal of hyper-individuation, that insistence on something else, that life force of friendship. it’s so easy for me to be fluent in the language of pain, but i am trying my best to hold the belonging amidst it — thank you for helping me be...be just someone reading a book & not some spectacle. you mean the world to me & i am so blessed by your presence. thank you for your honesty, for your world making, for your daily practice of freedom. i am grateful to have encountered you & i am changed from it.
