“Sometimes language can just hold what is” — Phone notes and fragments from 2021

Around this time last year, I wrote about my fairly new annual ritual of going through the notes app on my phone, (inspired by Ocean Vuong) and compiling some of the notes into one piece, building a practice in writing of “using everything” as Gertrude Stein once said.  

This year, I’m thinking about how this can also contribute to decolonial practice. After reading Matthew Salesses’ Craft in the Real World, I’m thinking alot about how white supremacy has defined writing and what we consider a story, and what we consider the “right” way to tell stories. In his book, he quotes this from Jane Allison: 

“The evaluation of meaning by how things end appeals to a sense of domination, as in the story of colonization. In some cultures, there are no lasts, only cycles, and firsts are politely refused or mistrusted.” – Jane Allison  

I’m wondering what it could look like to both write, and view writing, in a way that doesn’t think about endings, firsts and lasts, full narrative arcs. As I wrote last year, it’s feeling more and more comfortable to sometimes let language, as Jordan Kisner wrote, “just hold what is.”   

Here’s what I got for 2021.

(​​All sentences in quotations are quotes I heard from others, often jotted down quickly in a private conversation, so I kept the sentence as it was originally but left out an attribution. If the quote was said publicly, I wrote the speaker in parentheses. All sentences without quotations came from me.)

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Bless shared air 

Kim TallBear says she needs a wide sky…my body feels at home with storms. 

I have been an adventurer all my life, but I have never been a daredevil. I have always wanted to know how to feel safe and fully alive. 

this happened for me, not to me.

“All men are secretly bottoms.”

There are so many parts of me I haven’t indulged.

“So many times we’re told as kids “we’ll give you the keys to the kingdom, in return, we’re going to ask you to leave parts of yourself outside. I’m telling you, that bargain isn’t worth it.” (Casey Gerald) 

“To Pimp A Butterfly is what Oakland feels like to me.” 

“Queer identities are a daisy chain of becoming, a passing-on of possibility.” (Alex Marzano-Lesnevich) 

YOU HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THE PROCESS

serenity and containment is possible.

“You’re not exempt from this just because you’re a dude.” 

zero-waste is abolitionism, no one is disposable…

using they/them pronouns kinda sounded fun? Maybe I should change mine? 

You work your whole life to be a thing, and then once you’re a thing, they want you to be yourself? 

I don’t want to fall off anymore.

when i’m stressed, I still make the safest person near me bear the brunt of it.  

What do I do with the grief? ​​

washing the floors and walls and getting rid of the water. 

I’m accepting generosity, but not really getting what I want.

“Sexual liberation threatens capitalism. Sex is such a powerful portal to spirituality and altered states of consciousness and a part of me feels that the lack of education has been purposeful.” (Ella Noah Bancroft) 

Every relationship feels like it heals something until it doesn’t 

“People who are shitty to others, usually move through the world feeling like shit also.”

I’m sorry this year required so much pretending. I wish we could have painted with different colors.

“It’s more legit that you didn’t need someone to awaken queerness  in you, but that you just knew you were queer anyway… that you knew it even without another person.” 

“I am equally held by the sky as I am drawn by the earth.”

“we don’t do this to feel better, we do this to feel more”  (Nikita Prakash) 

In a time when those with power have taken so much away from those without, I still notice how often I also don’t claim the small power I have. 

No one knew dahlias 

“Sin as what separates us from the people we want to be in the world.”

Deciding to end a relationship with a very good person at 33 years old is probably one of the hardest and scariest things I’ve ever done. 

“Is there any relationship you don’t feel depleted by?” 

“When I was younger, I wanted to move quickly from experience to experience without getting stuck. But I’m interested now in what happens when you sit and watch, in attention as a kind of radical act.” (Danielle Dutton) 

My liberation awaits from slowing down

“You deserve to exist in a form that is constantly shifting and growing. Violence always goes towards those who challenge the parameters of reality.” 

“But really, what we’re hoping for when we read, is a partnership – the two of us, reader and writer, working together, both being surprised together” (George Saunders)

How to prepare for her? 

“It’s interesting to think about coming out, because I haven’t gone anywhere” (Denne Michelle) 

“The love of creation, that’s the love that heals us.”  

“i can’t believe i get to witness you”