ALC-NYC is back in the space, together! Today is my 30th birthday! Much is happening!

After a year and a half of pandemic precautions limiting us to virtual or outside connection, the start of this school year feels especially tender. Last week, returning to the space, I was overwhelmed (we left saying ‘we’ll probably be back in two weeks or by spring break the latest’ and leaving everything accordingly strewn about mid-project, including the bread left stapled to the wall…) but after the trash was cleared and a new coat of paint slapped on the cubbies and doors, it looks much more inviting and lived-in. Now, with young people in it? We’re home.

Since I was last here, I’ve changed a lot. Some of those changes have been in response to the conditions of apocalypse; some are the flowers rooted in past choices. Most of all, I’m changing how I feel about change.

Over the summer, I drove across the flats and heights and smoke plumes of this continent with a beloved trans partner. We lived in a car, and I learned to appreciate running water and a clean vault toilet. I experienced middle America and learned that I do not, in fact, pass as a cis woman anymore. I climbed cliffs, mastered rope systems, and learned that “afraid” doesn’t equal “in danger.” I trusted my body to dive off of the high board and practice the front flip I loved to do as a child. I witnessed a desert where there was once ocean; touched rocks made from sand and magma and heat and pressure; noticed how wind and water and shifting plates make new landscapes. I trusted my partner with my big feelings. I learned (I am learning) new ways to love myself.

This morning, I listened to a podcast where the host, astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, was pointing out that your job for capitalism doesn’t necessarily line up with your “soul’s purpose,” but sometimes it does. In light of this summer’s journey, this pandemic uncovering, these last years of ALC-land, I think mine might.

According to Lanyadoo, your “soul’s purpose” (which I continue to put in quotes because I’m skeptical of talk of souls even as I acknowledge that there is some part of me that’s not my brain and not my body but more than both - who is the watcher?) is to live in integrity with yourself and at harmony with your environment. Sometimes, that harmony can sound like discord, especially when we are coming up against aspects of our culture and environment that want to shrink us, or force us to conform. But living your purpose is playing your own song.

I’m really grateful, on this first Friday of the 2021-2022 school year, my sixth year at ALC-NYC, my 30th solar return, for the ways that this job supports me in living my soul’s purpose: as a curious human, an artist, a trans person, a kid collaborator and player of cosmic games.

A group of us sat down, Wednesday, to talk about what kind of science offering we want to do this year and we went down the butterfly-effect rabbit hole, speculating that in a different universe there is a different you who chose a different breakfast this morning. It’s fun to think about how the tiny choices we make result in different strands of existence and much, much harder to think about the big choices, even as they are obvious.

Six years ago, I left my corporate job and took the leap to ALC-land. I didn’t know if it was the right choice, but I knew I couldn’t keep going as I had been. Now, every part of my life is different. Perhaps there is a Mel out in the multiverse who was too scared to make the jump - perhaps they still present as a blonde-haired woman, or play capitalism to win, or worry that catastrophe will happen if they step outside of a familiar cultural script. But in this strange, apocalyptic strand, where pandemic and fire and hurricane shape the world, I resist the false safety of those boxes I once shut myself into. I exist, wholly. Like the earth, I am changing.

So far this week, I worked with kids on a cyanotype mural and taught the basics of clapping out rhythms and beginning to crochet; I facilitated two all-school meetings; I practiced handstands and pull-ups and learned to ride a skateboard; I enthusiastically listened to young people tell me about their summer adventures, their thoughts on gender identity, the best way to solve a Rubix cube. More has happened than can be recorded, but I am writing this incomplete letter to you, my future self, whoever will read it, because all I can do is shout into the universe that THIS IS HAPPENING AND WE ARE ALIVE AND CHANGING AND LEARNING TOGETHER.

Shout back?