Normally, I write my newsletters on Sundays and schedule them to send on Monday morning. That being said, it’s currently 9:50am on Monday, and I have just sat down to write. I don’t know when you’re reading this, but it’s certainly later than planned.
I spent almost all day yesterday sewing while Zoe ironed and pinned. We made a trip to Joann Fabrics to buy fabric for my backing, batting, binding, threads, embroidery hoops, a replacement rotary blade, safety pins, and some discounted candy. Sometimes, I read aloud to Zoe while they pinned—I was waiting for them to pass along their work so I could stitch it together. We watched an episode of Heartstopper, and episode of The Golden Bachelor.
Did I know I needed to write my newsletter? Yes.
But any time my hands weren’t busy working, I began to feel panic seep in through my pores. The requisite sitting and thinking that come with writing were impossible. They still feel impossible today, honestly, but I want to be able to write through anxiety, through fear.
Fear. The dominant feeling I’ve been experiencing for days. (For weeks, for months, for years?) Fear is ever-present, a heavy influence on everything I do. I’ve written before about struggling with agoraphobia; that struggle tends to take different shapes at different times, but hasn’t ever gone away completely. I talk about fear so often. In art therapy, it comes up with such frequency that my therapist wants us to “be curious” about it together, which is their coded language for figure out what the fuck is going on. Last session, they asked me to draw what fear would look like if it was a living, breathing thing. The result made us both laugh:
Fear looks, of course, terrified!
It’s fitting that my version of fear is so clearly a distant relative of octopuses. I have always been awed by those beautiful, mysterious creatures—so intelligent, yet so unlike our intelligence. Able to taste who we are on our skin. Squeezing their way into any space, wrapping their tentacles around something and refusing to let go.
I’ve been thinking about this silly little drawing since I made it.
Something I appreciate about art therapy is how, through prompts that feel childish and simple, I am able to see clearly what has felt so mature and complicated. Last week, I was able to admit that fear has its slimy tentacles wrapped around me, that it worms its way into everything—but also that it is clinging to both my emotions and my logic because it wants to be held and protected. Now, I have to embark on the challenging work of easing its grip so that fear and I can move forward, move through the source of distress, together.
I am afraid of being harassed when Zoe and I walk Marmalade. I am afraid of being in a car accident (since when do so many drivers run red lights?). I am afraid of being disrespected by a doctor or a coworker. I am afraid of the potential for mass violence—when I attend talks by trans activists or participate in protests, yes, but also when I go to the grocery store or the movie theater.
Now more than ever, I feel desperate to do the work of moving through fear. Because I want a better world, and I know that I cannot help build that world if I am scared to leave my apartment.
I want to use my voice to support and amplify the causes I believe in. I want to use my hands, head, and heart to shape the world into a place that is safer and more loving. When Zoe and I grow our family, I want to feel secure in the knowledge that the world will be kinder to our child than it has been to us. I want us to grow old together, happy and comfortable. So often, I’ve wondered, is that too much to ask for?
But slowly, a new thought has crept in: what if I demand it?
What if I—what if we—demand a better world? What if we agree to work together for the collective good? I know the work is difficult, so difficult that it terrifies me. Still, what else is there to do but try?
"Good Bones" by Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.When I first read this poem, I thought about my future child, about “trying / to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, / walking you through a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.” And I still think about them, that future someone. My early love of “Good Bones” came from a place of deep nihilism. I thought the poem was a write-off. I thought I could hand off the shithole to someone else, give up on any attempt at making it beautiful. It was selfish.
But now, I think about my parents, and my grandparents, and my great-grandparents. I think about the terrible things they kept from their children, the shithole they tried to sell.
If each generation tells the next, “You could make this place beautiful,” then there is a deeper promise: We could make this place beautiful. We could all do our best, whatever that looks like. If “Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible,” then it could be half good, too.
I am afraid of the work it will take to make this place beautiful. But I am also afraid of what the world will look like if I don’t do that work.
So, with fear on either side, I am choosing the promise of beautiful.
Free Palestine. This week’s “Ephemera” section is dedicated to the cause which has been on my mind for the past two weeks and which should have been on my mind for much, much longer.
Settler-colonialist, imperialist projects must be resisted. Israel is no exception. There is no safety or freedom for anyone under a state that commits war crimes, human rights violations, and genocide. Resisting imperialism is necessary to work toward a world that is safe for all of us: Muslim and Jewish, queer and straight, trans and cis, Black and white, and on and on and on. For all of us.
The response to armed resistance cannot be genocide.
"Before I Was a Gazan" by Naomi Shihab Nye
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined,
I was looking for my piece of paper,
proud of this plus that, then multiplied,
not remembering if I had left it
on the table after showing to my uncle
or the shelf after combing my hair
but it was still somewhere
and I was going to find it and turn it in,
make my teacher happy,
make her say my name to the whole class,
before everything got subtracted
in a minute
even my uncle
even my teacher
even the best math student and his baby sister
who couldn't talk yet.
And now I would do anything
for a problem I could solve.My heart aches and grieves and cries out for the Palestinian people. I will do what I can to support them. You should, too.
There are many wonderful, intelligent, passionate individuals and organizations who are speaking out in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people, who deserve freedom and safety and love and joy and liberation. I recommend following and supporting the work of Ericka Hart, Jewish Voice for Peace, We Are Not Numbers, and American Muslims for Palestine. I urge you to call your representatives and demand that they denounce the genocide in Gaza and refuse anymore US aid and weapons to Israel. If you’re looking for a reliable news source, I encourage you to listen to NPR and read Al Jazeera. (And I emphatically tell you: do not read the N*w Y*rk T*mes!) For my fellow artists, I encourage you to sign onto the Artists Against Apartheid open letter here.
Until all of us are liberated, none of us are liberated. There is no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation. We must, must stand together. We must make this place beautiful.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
I’m embarking on the first steps toward having top surgery—a long, bureaucratic process, one for which I’m grateful to have Zoe by my side. I don’t know if I’ll write in much detail about that process at some point, but I do want to share small updates with you all, my dear readers and friends.
Ah, the days are getting chillier. There was frost on the grass when I walked Marmalade this morning!
Zoe and I went to a friend’s Halloween party last Friday dressed as our beloved movie characters, Ken and Allan from Barbie. Here’s a look at our costumes:
Image Description: Emory and Zoe are standing in their dining room. The gray wall with Heartstopper leaves and the doorway to Emory’s office are visible behind them. Emory is dressed as Ken, wearing a black headband, an “I am Kenough” sweatshirt, and gray sweatpants. Zoe is dressed as Allan, wearing a colorful striped shirt—from “Ken’s” closet—a horses badge, blue shorts, and Converse. To end, I want to share a poem that has been on my mind and my heart recently:
"What You Must Do" by Qwo-Li Driskill
First, call the words from your marrow.
Pull them from strands of muscle,
dark and warm.
You will bleed.
Form them into clay.
Breathe.
Then, offer them your flesh.
They will take nothing less.
Run with your words to the top of a cliff.
Let go.
Hurry.
They come for us in the morning.
Beautiful as always.