What Do You Want?

When I came out to my mom as a non-binary trans person, she asked me, “What do you want?” and I struggled to answer. I’d spent the previous 6 weeks up and down the state of California, living out of a backpack, running ALF summers and traveling openly with my new pronouns; I’d been avoiding this conversation with her but was relieved to finally be having it. It’s such a simple question, yet so powerful. It’s a cornerstone of self-directed education.“What do you want?” my mom asked me, her voice small and far away. The knot in my stomach was familiar. My fear, my avoidance, was familiar.“I want a coffee,” I said, deferring. “I want world peace.”“Really?” she asked. “That’s what you want?”***I got mispronouned a lot this summer. I’m making a distinction between misgendering and mispronouning because I want to acknowledge that it was, for the vast majority, an accidental slip of language and not a malicious erasure of my gender identity. It wasn’t surprising - from the beginning, when I started coming out to people as non-binary and asking them to use “they/them” instead of “she/her” pronouns when they spoke about me, the most common response I got was “I’m totally gonna try, just bear with me because it’s really hard.”And I did - the conflict-averse part of myself, the bit that was ashamed and afraid of taking up too much space assured them that it was okay, that it just meant a lot to me that they were willing to try.I made that assurance because I felt shame about having desires, about taking up space. I felt shame that what I wanted was not what white, western, capitalist, heteronormative US society told me that I wanted - that I forfeited some of my privileges as a middle-class, college-educated, english-speaking, white, cisgender female US citizen to be a radical transgender unschooler. I felt shame. I feel shame. The system wants me to feel it - requires me to feel it in order to maintain its coercive power over us. I was prepared to have grace for it to be hard for other people because it was hard for me.The thing that started happening, though, was that people didn’t try. That people continued to breeze past pronouns with no concern for their power or the harm it might cause me. I got misprounouned with disappointing frequency by people I had been radically vulnerable with. Sometimes I would catch them - “they, not she,” I would say - and they wouldn’t even hear their mistake but would continue blithely on talking about me. Sometimes I would catch them and they would turn into an avalanche of apology - “oh my gosh, I’m so, so, so, so, so sorry, it’s just so hard for me, you just have to bear with me I’ve never encountered this before and it’s all so new” and in my head the shame siren would blare: you’re wrong you’re bad your body is wrong you’re too hard you’re wrong.Sometimes I would just be quiet.***When I finally sat down with my mother’s question, days after she’d asked it, I realized my essential answer was tripart:

• I want to feel comfortable, powerful and valid, in my body and my self expression.
• I want to feel loved and supported by the people I love and support.
• I want people to use “they/them” pronouns with fluidity and consistency when they talk about me.

This is the third place I’ve written these wants, and the most public. I feel them growing in power each time I articulate them. I feel myself growing in power each time I articulate what I want.***The thing about coming out is that you’re never done doing it. I know this, intellectually. I’d had some experience with it previously, when I came out as gay and spent several years navigating the world of “well what does your boyfriend think of your haircut” and other heteronormative nonsense -- an alarming number of barbers feel emboldened to ask you this question as they hold a razor to your skull.I have grace for the people who mispronoun me, I do, I swear. But I need us to do better. And not just because I’m tired of having the same conversation (though I am) but because I’m tired of having the same conversation in ALC-land, where we’re supposed to be liberated, empathetic, understanding, imaginative humans raising liberated, empathetic, understanding, imaginative children. If self-directed learning is about asking the question “what do you want?” and meaning it, we have to do better when the real answer to that question requires us to do a hard thing.Yes, it’s hard to hear pronouns. Our brains are amazing - they are so efficient that they effectively edit out the the parts of speech that we use most commonly. It’s why you probably didn’t realize that the word “the” is doubled in the previous sentence: your brain skipped it. Amazing.It’s hard to do things that require us to make new neural pathways or to see things that were previously invisibilized to us. Privilege, intersections, toxic whiteness or heteronormativity - it is work to see the places that we’re unconsciously holding poisons, without shame or defensiveness or our egos rearing up to say “I’m not a bad person, I’m trying!”As facilitators, it’s our job to make spaces safe for children. Trans children and gender-variant children, yes, and children living at all kind of intersections of privilege that are outside of our experience. Some of those children will ask us to do hard things - they will offer the miraculous radical vulnerability of children - and it is our responsibility to get it right. It is not enough to say I’m trying.***Only I am living this. Only I get to say what it feels like. Only I get to answer the question “what do you want?”And,the only way of living this is in relationship. I am in relationship with you. I want you to use they/them/theirs when you speak about me: They were traveling all summer. I talked to them the other day. Sounds like their trip was pretty wild.***California is on fire. Nearly everywhere I went in the state, I could smell smoke on the air. Some mornings, we would come outside and the car would be covered in ash. The locals were nonchalant about it, but it disturbed me deeply. I began to have nightmares about fire: rescuing children from it, needing to warn people who didn’t notice it was coming.Our political system, our courts, our educational institutions, our state are on fire. They are actively destroying to everything in their path. It is not enough to notice a harmful thing and to walk away from it. It isn’t. Not if you’re not willing to shift your gaze to yourself and see the ways that the system has broken you. If not, you’re just carrying the spark of that flame with you, you’re going to set someone else ablaze. Probably someone with less privilege than you. Possibly a child you’re responsible to.Children tend to be less attached to gender than adults are, and I think it’s important to note. If gender is constructed, like currency, on the mutual agreement of its value rather than something tangible, then it can be destabilized by our refusal to believe in it. As a person who occupies the spaces between genders - who was raised a girl and grew up to be something more complicated than “woman” and less certain than “man” - I dream of destabilizing the gender binary. I think raising free people means raising people who see the assigning of gender categories to be just that - a linguistic tic, a trope of our speech - rather than something essential. I like to think that my presence as an out and outspoken non-binary facilitator will be helpful to some children as they come into awareness of gender. I hope so.What I really want is to break systems of oppression. What I really want is for children inherit a world that is better than this one. What I really want is for them to grow up comfortable in their most radical wantings, to believe their impossible dreams.I want world peace, but first I have to get comfortable with wanting.

ALF Summer, Take 3

"You keep saying that," David pointed out. I was talking about how valuable it is to be able to go back and read all the things I've written in the last two years - blog posts, yes, but journals and notebooks and sketchbook marginalia, too. The other night I went back and read through all the blog posts here all the way back to the very first one and so much has changed and also I am still the same person, somehow.Part of the thing that is doing this work (facilitating? ALFing? deschooling?) well is realizing all the ways schooling and other coercive systems we live in (gender, capitalism, white supremacy...) have put shit on us that is real trauma, held in our bodies, and we need to find ways to put it down without putting it on the children we're holding space for. Writing is one way I do that work - as adrienne marie brown says in Emergent Strategy, "I have to write, in some form, every day. It's how I understand the world." Recently, I spent a day in bed with a sprained ankle reading the notebooks I've filled this spring, "witnessing my selves, all the ways they were hurtling through our changes without stopping to process the shift in psyche. Going deep, spiritually, and finding a different well than expected."But I don't exist in a vacuum - it's not enough to go into myself, to write and read in reflection and call the work done. Sharing my learning - being in relationship with other humans is scarier, but no less vital. It is harder for me to trust other humans than to trust my past selves. I was just in a breakout offering about challenges of ALFing where we sat around in the library (my favorite room) and talked to each other like we're people and I could feel the space we made together - Stef and Momo and Beckett and Chuck and I - and the sanctuary in it. We spent a lot of this week talking about tools, which are useful because they are supportive in holding the structures of the school but aren't the thing. Tools free us up to do the hard, real, important work of being in relationship with each other. Being in relationship is the thing.We need to free ourselves to raise free people but that work is neither linear nor is that process ever really done. There is no waiting for things to be done because to be alive is to be changing. Recently, I find my words take me through a slurry of time in a ways that's frustratingly imprecise; what I'm trying to tell you is that in the two years since I wrote this list of intentions I have done all of them and also undergone a profound psychic reorganization to do so. I want to tell you all about it - maybe, one day in the space of our relationship, you'll feel like you know my story and I will know yours. But I'm not here to hold my life out as an example to convince anyone that this is the "right" way to do ALFing, to get validation for my experiences, to sell it. Rather, I'm here attempting to perform radical vulnerability in a way I don't really feel yet, in an attempt to connect to other people who want to do this work too - the painful transmutations and joyful play alike.I recently learned that caterpillars turn themselves into soup and digest themselves in order to become butterflies. It feels like an apt metaphor. Yesterday, Beckett came over and laid on the table between us a post-it that said "ALFs - what is challenging about this job?" and I looked them in the eye and said "everything" and we both laughed because they know what I'm talking about. Tools are useful and writing is helpful and this work is deeply, beautifully challenging because being alive is deeply, beautifully challenging - I have learned so much about myself with the support of writing and other tools in the last two years and I am grateful for that. But a next cycle is beginning, (is always beginning and ending and...) and in this one I want to be in relationship with other facilitators who can play in these waters of strange radical alchemy - who want to play there with me.We're almost through with today, but nowhere close to done.<3Mel 

This Week: An Ending

“It’s more of a negotiation now,” says Chuck to Timo, on the far side of the makerspace. It's project time; they're building longbows, which are clamped to the tables in front of the window, waiting for a cut by the circular saw.On this side of the room, Siena is painting a flower and Saylor, next to her, is painting a waterfall. Lili is repairing her checkerboard sweatshirt with green thread. I’m here, writing. There is New-Orleans-style jazz playing quietly. The afternoon sun is shining, there’s a wind rustling the leaves of the sapling across the street. A fan is on, whirring quietly. The air is light and warm. We all give our consent for the longbow-builders to use the circular saw. The sound rips the room; roars and then suddenly ceases. Now Lili is pretending to be hard of hearing. We all laugh at her joke. I feel content and present.---The new moon is tomorrow; our last day in the space is tomorrow. So much has happened this year. The kids are growing and I am growing too. My relationship with time has shifted. I am learning to hold all my selves - past, present, and future - in love. I am learning to take up the right amount of space. I am learning what it means to live as an artist, as a traveler. I am learning the names of my demons. I have been wounded; I am learning to heal. My being has shifted but my words haven’t, yet (have they?).---I just got sidetracked by a conversation. Saylor asked me a question and, in response, I shared a framework my painting teacher gave me: painting is a physical meditation. You are present, holding the brush, moving the paint, mixing it and observing its hues, making strokes and observing their forms, having the patience to be in your painting, your hand, your arm, your body, your mind. This is what a meditation is.There is no other way to do it than to paint. Saylor wasn't as interested in the framework, but Lili was, so we talked through it. I made a gesture of offering, my hands open, placing it on the table between us.I am aware of how much is lost in this retelling. The space that our relationship opens is ephemeral; the space we make in conversation is discovery. I could transcribe my experience. It could be true. But would it be real?---It’s time to go now - I’ve promised Siena we could read Frog and Toad Are Friends at 2:30 in the hammock. I love you, I am grateful that you read me. This has been an incomplete report.

This Week: June Feels, More Field Trips, a Carving, and Where the Wild Things Are

For the last two weeks my countdowns have felt anticipatory, excited, tired, what-else-can-we-squeeze-in-before-we're-done frantic; today I feel bittersweet and tender. There's a week left of school but the goodbyes have already started - Beth's last day was today - and yesterday at the Assembly meeting the parents held a gratitudes circle just for the ALFs and we all cried at the beautiful things they said to and about us. We're here at the end; I feel relieved because I am tired, I feel satisfied because I see the growing we've done much clearer than I could previously, I feel sad because a cycle is ending and mourning is valid.I was talking to Abby last night after the Assembly about cycles and time, and we're in agreement that three years of facilitating feels significant. We're approaching the end of my second year of ALFing - three-years-ago-me didn't even know that this could be my life yet. Three-years-ago-Mel was working at a corporate job that I hated and couldn't yet imagine my way out. Two-years-ago Mel knew they were leaving the safety of the path laid out by schooling and normie-culture expectations but didn't yet know what that would entail. Last-year Mel thought they knew a lot and, though they'd grown a bunch in this work, they weren't yet ready to sit comfortably in uncertainty. I don't know yet that I'm comfortable with uncertainty, but I feel comfortable recognizing there are so many things that I don't yet know - about how to be a good facilitator, a healthy human, a fulfilled person, about how all those things are connected - I feel wiser in my unknowing than I ever felt in my (many) years of chasing certainty. I'm not wise, but I am willing to play. Alright, that's enough navel gazing. Here's to the week:Monday we played Blind Horse Tag in Acro (a kid sits on an adults' shoulders and covers the adults' eyes with their hands/steers their "horse" around in a game of tag) which is both stressful and very fun - it makes me feel strong. We were trying to do a straddle-bat lift, but Ash and I kept talking about our meat and bones and laughing and falling over. After, he and I made a Sim of me, which was just as fun as I remember it being 15 years ago. Siena and I read Where the Wild Things Are - she'd never read it before, which meant I got to share in the joy of her first reading of it. Even and I did Philosophy - we talked morality, psychology, concrete examples, Leia and the trolley problem. Chuck and Timo started building a bow; Ry took Joy Burger and Central Park trips; Katherine made a great save in kickball. We all hung out with sleepy Chova the dog. On Tuesday Sterl had a bit of a meltdown about Seb taking apart his lego creations and I mediated. It's not the first conflict on this topic between these humans - in fact, we have a "no hoarding shared resources" agreement because Seb got sick of Sterl telling him that he was using all the pieces and came to Change-Up to do something about it a couple of months ago. What was interesting about Tuesday was how I felt different in my mediation than I had previously; how I could feel myself holding it lightly. We wound up talking about how entropy is the state of the universe, how stasis is impossible because everything is changing all the time. Even if you stay perfectly still, your muscles will atrophy. Are you moving towards growth or are you hoping for stasis? I'm not the only one who's been growing - Seb, who came here two years ago, has developed a level of patience in mediation that his two-years-ago self didn't know he was capable of. I'm really proud of him and, while I'm sad to say goodbye, I'm so excited for him to continue to grow his skills and talents at Special Music School next year, where he'll be a vocal major for high school.Wednesday we had visitors - Megan and Liz, who are hoping to start an ALC in the Philly suburbs, and their kids - and it was quiet enough in the space that Abby and I could spend two hours in the afternoon answering their questions. I was feeling kind of weird when I got home that evening, so I wrote a list of good things that I did in my day notes: "Reading Far from the Tree in the lobby w/ Chova the dog curled up on me & seeing Siena discover asparagus & laughing w/ Nahla about the first three questions everyone asks & getting surprised with biodegradable glitter gifted by Abby & a full gratitudes meeting & a smooth cleanup & Jiji and Roan playing tag in the hall..."Yesterday was a two field trip day - Abby took Xander and Jiana to the Rockaways, and Chuck & I went mini-golfing on Pier 25 with Erez, Demian, Hannah, Beth, & Siena. Mini-golf was very fun, but I forgot my water bottle and so wanted to go back to school right after we were done. Demian opted to come with me, and we spent the subway ride talking about Harry Potter spoilers, King Arthur's sword, metaphors, the Elder Wand, and swapping book recommendations. After school was the final potluck and Assembly meeting of the year. Like I said, the parents surprised us by holding a gratitudes circle for everyone to tell us ALFs how grateful they were for us and I got ALL the feels. Honestly, I still can't believe I have the incredible privilege to wake up every morning and come to work here; I cannot describe my gratitude.Today was quiet - we had our final check-in and change up of the year. I finished carving my rose block and test-printed it; I'm very pleased with how it turned out. We had a culture committee on trolling, which felt really efficient (and we decided the consequence of not being able to troll responsibly is getting removed from the troll whitelist and not being able to troll at all for the rest of the year, which feels so fair to me...). Beth and I chatted for a while about the growing she's done this year and decided we'd be pen pals again this summer. The next thing I knew it was cleanup and blog time and here we are...  

On Changing

Positive transformations are achieved when initial disequilibrium, which is traumatic and brief, gives way to psychic reorganization, which is gradual and enduring. It would appear to be true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

-Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree

This Week: Routine Interruptions, End-of-the-Year Chill, Beach Trips, Blooming Roses, and a Dog Friend

Another week has gone! Only two remain! The roses in my neighborhood are blooming already! What even is time!This week felt a little strange the whole time, because Monday was Memorial day and we didn't have school. I spent the day with my family in the suburbs, which was lovely (and very green) but my rhythm was all off afterwards. It's as if the calendar doesn't care about my personal qualms with messing up my routine, which I think is very inconsiderate of the calendar. Regardless, no school Monday (and no Acro!) so not much to report there. Here's the suburbs, seen from my mom's front lawn:Tuesday we were joined by Chova the World's Chillest Terrier. Savannah is her human, and we've been testing what it's like to have a student bring companion animals into the space. So far so good; she's honestly one of the sweetest beings I've met (which makes her a great match for her human!). Currently she's sitting on Savannah's lap next to me just gently licking her arm. Honestly. This dog.The rest of Tuesday was really chill - I spent a lot of time reading Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon, which is a wide-ranging exploration of the duality of illness and identity, and the ways those overlapping concepts play out in relationships between parents and their children. There are 10 chapters - Deaf, Dwarfs, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, Disability, Prodigies, Rape, Crime, and Transgender. It's not light reading (and it's nearly 900 pages long, including all the notes and references) but it's nuanced, well-researched, and compassionately communicated. It's not the kind of book you necessarily need to read cover-to-cover, (I started with Autism and have been jumping around) but I find the more I read of it the more I want to read. I'm only about halfway through, and I highly recommend it.Wednesday we took a beach trip to the Rockaways! Ry met Beth, Saylor, Zoe, and Siena there, and I brought Xander, Erez, Aniya, and Hannah from East Harlem on the ferry. It wasn't perfect beach weather but it was a great day anyway - the ferry was especially fun. Also, despite heavy cloud cover, Ryan, Beth, and I managed to all get sunburned. Just another reminder to always wear sunscreen!!      Yesterday I was so tired after Wednesday's tripping - I wound up riding 9 total subways and walking 5 miles, on top of the ferry, because I went to acupuncture after all that. Chuck took Even and Doug on a field trip to the Museum of the Moving Image that sounded super fun. I wound up doing some more reading, and making art with Roan in the lobby (we're working on a book!). I also wound up talking to two different groups at length about the weirdness of having a body, a subject near and dear to my heart. I've been thinking a lot about how we are our bodies, how our bodies are our minds, how we turn food, through the complex process of digestion, into electricity in order to operate our meat, which in turn allows us to experience sensation and time and relationships. There are more cells in your body (about 37 TRILLION and that doesn't even include the microbes that live in your gut!!!) than there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. We are galaxies, each of us, we are superclusters. It's pretty amazing.Today has been quiet. There were no new awarenesses in check-in (a first for this year). I started carving a lino block inspired by the roses on my city block. It won't capture their color but it will get at their lovely, loose shape. I love roses, even though I know it's cliche - I love their variety, and their boldness. I love how flowers be, and I'm trying to be more like them; to trust that existing as my full, colorful self is enough to attract what I need to help me grow.  I've done a lot of growing this year, and I can feel this cycle coming to a close...<3MelBonus photo: Ry wanted to go to the park but kids weren't ready yet so I walked out in the lobby and found...

This Week: The End of Ancillary, Actual Springtime, and Three Field Trips

ALERT: THERE ARE ONLY THREE WEEKS LEFT IN THE SCHOOL YEAR>> ALERT: THERE ARE ONLY THREE WEEKS LEFT IN THE SCHOOL YEAR>> ALERT: THERE ARE ONLY THREE WEEKS LEFT IN THE SCHOOL YEAR>>It feels bittersweet to be reaching the end of the year. I’m grateful to have made the long trek through winter to May - my favorite ALC month - and yet I feel a bit stunned that we’re here already. I’m energized by the beautiful weather, the field trips, the fun we’re having now that we’ve hit our stride, but I’m also tired. That might just be my body trying to get my attention, though, and after the week I’ve had I can’t blame it…From the top, I just want to acknowledge myself for moving my body both days last weekend - climbing on Saturday and riding my bike Sunday. Yay body! Yay self!Monday morning started with Acro, as it does, and I’m so excited about the ways that my body has gotten stronger and better at Acro in the last few months. This week I based several different people (including Ash, who is almost as tall as me…), but I also did something much scarier: I flew. I was laying on my back on the ground and Yoni and Ryan each grabbed one of my arms and one of my legs. Then they began to swing me - one, two, three - and swung me all the way up and over so I was standing on their shoulders. It was terrifying, but I did it! Yay body! Shoutout to Yoni and Ryan, for being extremely dependable humans. I didn’t do much else on Monday (including writing time… which I feel guilty about skipping) because I developed some pretty intense nausea after Acro. I don’t think it’s directly related to flying through the air in a terrifying lift, but doing Acro without first eating a good breakfast or drinking enough water is not a good idea. Lesson learned.Also on Monday: doggo visitor.On Tuesday, Ash, Timo, and I FINISHED ANCILLARY MERCY!!!! It’s an all-caps achievement for sure - the whole trilogy clocks in at 996 pages of hard science fiction, diving through deep questions about who is a person, what is justice, and how to change the status quo (and what does any of that mean to begin with). It’s a series that doesn’t shy away from moral quandaries, which I love. (Personally, I believe that all good sci-fi is actually philosophy, but much more interesting.) Getting to share a deep, brilliant story that I love with two teens who invested their time and attention to delving into the complexities of it has been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had so far as a facilitator. I’m really grateful to Timo and Ash for sharing it with me, and proud of us for finishing it!Also on Tuesday: fabric store trip and painting with Saylor, Latin American and Industrial Revolutions in Histoy, I cut Abby’s hair, and “Ry on Shark Tag DL - Xander told him not to do the god arm but he didn’t listen…”Wednesday I went to Brooklyn Bridge Park with Saylor, Zoe, Beth, Siena, Doug, Javair, Serena, Hannah, Erez, Even, Demian, Chuck & Ry. We watched a super cool glassblowing demo on a barge and played at three different playgrounds. All told, I walked 5.5 miles! Plus, I got to talk to Timo about the NYC skyline, history, and broken-windows policing for a while… Yesterday we went BACK to Brooklyn Bridge park to go bouldering at the Cliffs @ DUMBO boulders. We had to wait a while for them to open, so I hung out in the ship-shaped park with Douglas, Saylor, Zoe, Beth, Siena & Siena’s mom and sister. Ry, Demian, Even, and Hannah came and met us, and then all of us walked down to the East River waterfront to eat lunch and hang out for a while. Then we went climbing - there too I can feel my body getting stronger, more confident. DUMBO boulders is right under the Manhattan Bridge, which is pretty cool except that it’s SUPER loud with trains going by every few minutes - after an hour or two there I always feel really mentally exhausted from all the noise. Plus, the routes were kind of confusingly marked. I was talking to Even afterwards, and I think we’re going to go back to the Cliffs’ regular location in Long Island City, which is more clearly labeled and less overwhelmingly loud. David and Jessie came and visited from Philly, but I missed them because I was in Brooklyn all morning (I am super grateful that I got to meet other people directly at BK bridge park instead of coming up to East Harlem and all the way back out both Wednesday and Thursday...). Today Tomis, Nancy, and Huxley are visiting! Huxley is so tiny I actually don’t know what to do with him quite, but it’s lovely to see all three humans. Ry and I took a big group to see SOLO today, which I was worried was going to be terrible but actually was pretty passable. Lots of high-speed chases and double-crossing, which is exactly what I wanted from it…Finally, a puppet update: there’s a new one and it’s equally terrifying. I have a feeling this won’t be the last three field trip week of the year… Tune in to find out!<3Mel

This Week: Intense Astrology, Rainy Days, David Bowie and the Art of Omelettes

It’s been overcast every day this week and raining most of that time - the energy is a mirror of the weather and I’ve noticed our stifled, humid tensity. Towards the end of the week things have been clearing up, thankfully, and it looks like the sun will come out soon. But, like I just told Siena, I cannot and will not predict the weather, I just live in it…I had a great Acro day on Monday! I can feel my body getting stronger, which is so awesome, and I based not only Ash but Katherine on top of him! Yoni is a rad human for a lot of reasons, but I’m coming to appreciate his superpower of getting one to do something they didn’t know their body was capable of without making a fuss about it. I was basing Ash and then Yoni was like “okay, now Katherine is going on top” and then there she was and I was holding both of them with my legs! I have a skeleton and it is strong! Also on Monday: started my second astrology post (forthcoming) in Writing Time, watched "Why Does the Universe Exist?" and talked about genocide, dysentery, and the Oregon Trail in Philosophy, and read more Ancillary Mercy with Timo and Ash. We’re getting so close to the end of the trilogy...Tuesday was a strange day, and not just for me. Astrologically speaking, there were two significant events: Uranus moving into Taurus, and the new moon, also in Taurus. The former is significant because of its rarity - Uranus moves signs only once every 7 years - and because it is the planet of unbalancing, of breakthroughs and breaking open, of unequal balances of power. In Taurus, the sign of the earth, stability, and groundedness, it’s not particularly comfortable, and this transit will certainly be an interesting one. With it conjuncting the new moon in Taurus, it was a potent day. New moons generally are - they’re a time of beginning, and powerful moments of inception, hence it intensifying the Uranus shift.Astrology aside, I started my Tuesday by talking about the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, (quick plug for the Revolutions podcast if you’re interested in an in-depth look at both/either - his season on the Haitian revolution is particularly good) and the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict in History. The last felt especially important, and present after waking up to the news reporting the deaths and injuries to Palestinian protesters at the hands of Israel’s army (speaking of unequal distributions of power over land…). I then rolled into Spanish, where Abby, Timo and I translated “To Change the World Enough” by Alice Walker and then from there into Cook Noob, where fry-master Chuck spent three hours presiding over the production of french fries. I didn’t do much cooking, but I did talk at length to Even about how I don’t think that your brain is where your personhood solely resides - how I think all of your organs, your whole body as a system, is an inherent part of your person. If you’re new to this blog, check out this post for more rambles on this topic.On Wednesday we had Dan and Grace Ports come and visit with their three under-4-year-old children. It was fun having tinies in the space and seeing our small humans react to them being around (shoutout to Abby, for being a baby whisperer). It definitely felt like an ALL THE THINGS day, although writing about it now I’m grateful for the opportunity to get one-on-one and one-on-small-group time: I worked with Beth on writing for over an hour, and read more Ancillary with Timo and Ash, and screened Labyrinth (one of my favorite movies OF ALL TIME) in anticipation of Thursday’s trip…Because Thursday we went to the Brooklyn Museum (a.k.a. my favorite museum…) to see the Bowie exhibit! The whole day was so great. I met Beth, Saylor, and Siena there right when the museum opened since we’re all Brooklyn-based, and we went up to the 4th floor and rambled through the period rooms and also Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party. Saylor took all the incredible photos below (except the ones she's in...) and I want to acknowledge her for capturing the creepy/cool/beautiful sense of hauntedness that I feel in the period rooms in particular.

Then we met up with Hannah, Nahla, Ash, Joaquin, and Abby, who had traveled down from east Harlem, and we went and checked out the mummies and then went to BOWIE.First of all, can we just have a moment of appreciation for the human that was David Bowie? Not only was he a rock star - he released 27 albums in 50 years! - he painted and drew and danced and wrote movies and starred in movies and and and… There are over 500 artifacts in this exhibit, from costumes to videos to handwritten pages of lyrics. David Bowie is one of my heroes - his prolificness as an artist, his rejection of gender, his fascination with space and reinvention of the self all inspire me in the creative life I seek to live. Most of the kids on the trip weren’t familiar with Bowie beforehand (some of them had seen Labyrinth, but that was about it) and so there was the fizzing magic of getting to share in that first-time seeing on top of my massive baseline excitement. Saylor and Ash and I moved slowly through, reveling in all the work. We sat for a long time in a room with several giant projectors where they play a loop of him at a live show as Ziggy Stardust. Honestly, David Bowie is magic and the fact that he existed is proof enough, for me, that the universe is full of infinite possibility. If you have a chance to see the exhibit, I highly recommend it.Today has been mostly chill - it feels like the humidity has broken. Wally, Roan’s dad, was here taking portraits, which was so fun, and Svetlana, Rachel, and Adrienne came in to start on an ALC Memory Book (a kind of scaled-down yearbook project…) which I’m super excited about. I went and pulled out all my school photos from this year and there are over 400 of them! It feels like a lot but it also feels right. I made a four-egg omelette with broccoli and mushrooms for lunch that was so delicious. I’m really mastering the art of omelettes. The key is to get the pan very hot and well-greased before adding the eggs.That’s about it. There’s only 4 weeks left now (AHHHHHHH!!!!!) and I’ve got a lot of writing started so watch this space - I’m trying to channel the prolificness of Bowie…<3Mel

on boundaries

Humans are mostly water -electricity run through meat -bounded by our skin;our largest organdivides the sea within us from the air outside,holds together our private oceans.Skin is our primal boundaryour primary boundary.Humans are mammalswe grow in someone else’s skinand require the intimacyof skin-to-skin contactas infants or else we spendour childhood, our learning-to-personhoodunable to trust other humans.Biologically, we requirethe physical manifestation of the boundarybetween the self and others.Our infancy is learningthat we are a person apartfrom our mothers -discovering “I” and how to meet itsdemands, - then, in childhood,learning that others’“I” is as powerful and deep as our own -learning empathy.Boundary is definitionby binary; you can’t have yeswithout no“that” is also “not that”“me” is “not me”

On Reality

You, my dear, have a body. And should you desire to remain on this spinning rock hurtling through space, you will need a body to do it. Everything else we think we know is up for debate.

-Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology