(found mind-mapping notes from Acorn, fall 2015)

create new + better culture

learn to dance again
learn to write (creative non-fiction)
learn to build puppets
learn art history
learn animation
theatre

DIY archivist / folklorist
-document ephemeral culture and dying culture
-oral histories, folk traditions

be a better clown
unlearn
learn new histories
tell untold stories
-write historical fiction movie scripts
-animate with morgan
vaudeville revival / traveling variety show
make zines
write letters
anachronism - move backward from electronics + technology

the veggie soup has chicken stock, donated pre dumpster so technically it's freegan. I almost eat it but I almost cry at the thought. I'd rather go hungry I decide. worse things have happened. do no harm or whatever. plus I've already had one meal today which is better than other days. why is food so fucking hard?? especially on this trip where food is a major theme, a center point of community. am I being dumb by sticking so hard to my vegetarianism? even GPaul the vegan eats piles of dumpster meat. am I just being stubborn? what products are more evil? I'm smoking newports for fucks sake. I'm already ruined. already I'm wondering if I can convince Lando to stop on the road for subway or Taco Bell or some such garbage because I'm clinging so hard to this one thing: I dont eat animals. I just can't do it. maybe this is absurd but it's been over seven years now and it may be the truest thing I've committed to. so I sit outside and smoke and think and feel hungry and wonder if this is a condition of my privilege.  yes, probably. and is it rude for me to abstain in this place, in this broken city with its food deserts, after these good people have housed me and helped me and even thanked me for just taping them?

but of course i can't. i munch on home fries and bits of tofu, and reagan gives us granola for the road, the ridiculous road of me and lando and a new friend named steph, and somehow it takes us 6 hrs to do a normally 3 hour drive. but of course we make it, despite it all, and acorn is now warm and familiar and weirdly enough people are happy to see me.

male call

this part is just about me. (is it?) i expect to be treated with respect by my colleagues.
maybe i haven't always, maybe i don't always think i deserve anything.
i feel like none of the men on this project have offered to get to know me, or have tried to listen.
do you hear yourselves??????
you'll say you want open communication, but i don't actually feel that.

you have all interrupted me repeatedly. (at some point i just stop trying to talk. i'm not alone in this.)
you have not trusted me, especially steve, especially about tech stuff.
you've told me you want me to create/propose my own projects, but i'm shot down mid-pitch (pax) or your ideas for what the project wants/needs are so specific, there's no room for my input/vision.
you want to know what's going on, but when i try to have real talk with pax, he says he "doesn't care" (LITERALLY) and just wants to keep talking.
you want me to listen to your theories and philosophies and your version of the story, even when it's not yours. this is not the way i learn or the way i communicate with the world.
you want me to be flexible but you want me to
you think i'd be wasting time at BFF without a strict video schedule set up, but no one introduced me to anyone or set up interviews ahead of time at Ganas, Twin Oaks, or Acorn.
you want me to participate but you don't treat me like a fellow organizer. (at meetings, i'm invisible. you skip right over me in the go-around without a second thought.)
you touched me without my permission the second time we met. you touched my leg when we were alone in the car and it was creepy. then in your video interview, you brag about your consent culture and how important it is, how it's the ONLY orientation at acorn. (by the way i didn't get an orientation at acorn, and i felt both forgotten and resented for the entire three weeks.)
you say i can decide, that i can say no, but if i lean that way, there's immediately pushback to convince me otherwise. am i allowed to make my own decisions or not? will my decisions be respected?
you say our styles are different, you liken mine to nature-style documentary where i show up at the scene and just shoot what's happening, whereas your style is to schedule and organize ahead of time (oh thanks what a great tip, i'm just such a fucking messy idiot) but you forget that i do. not. know anyone. i don't have contact info. i don't have an "in" and in these people's position, i wouldn't necessarily trust me. (see ex. "stranger with a camera")
you tout yourselves as so radical, so egalitarian, then WHY ARE YOU A BUNCH OF WHITE MEN and when will you stop making racisit comments and joking about rape and talking down to women?
do NOT touch me. do NOT pretend we are friends.
you fucked my trust when i told you a really personal story and i thought maybe you would get to know me, but you used it as a factoid, another trivial point of information, to STRANGERS, people i had just met.
you don't know my hurts.
you don't know me at all.
your whole new world is a frat house.



three bad situations that made me cry. so embarassing to be that pathetic in front of my psuedo-bosses, but the weird part is that it wasn't acknowledged, at the time or later. maybe i'm more subtle than i think... but even then, didn't you see that i was upset? how i shut down and walked away? did you wonder why? or did you just assume it's because i "can't handle" your "style" aka your white straight male BULLSHIT.

literally feeling like maybe i just can't work with men.
i am astounded by how radical you think you are. i want to laugh but it's actually scary.





the org

expected internal calendar, contact list
--i never know where anyone is going to be or where I'M going to be. plans seem to change every day without me knowing.

seems to be so much theoretical / hypothetical -- imo, too much.


what the hell has been happening since 2013? i don't see any work being done to connect point a to other local orgs, i don't see any outreach. this looks like a circle of friends at best, a clique at worst. and you're literally trash talking other people's projects, but what the fuck makes you so much better than them?

was there ANY media plan/strategy before i arrived. you say you "talked about it" but did you actually decide anything?
what do you ACTUALLY expect of me? and is there ANY consensus on that?




i watch you talk in circles. i watch you preach to the choir. i watch the women get cut off mid-sentence, or never get the space to speak in the fist place.

STRAIGHT WHITE CIS MEN are leading us again, hurray! what would we do without them and their big brilliant brains!

i should be better, glow more glitter
not blurry squinting hunching monster
new holes in my dress + my head
i've stayed and i'll stay here for hours
smoking up these papers
until i stumble walk the bottle back to bed
never eat, oversleep
drink till you can't remember where you put your feet
they found you fallen in the street
all blood + piss + fleas + meat
immature + undercooked
never had a chance you took

the house is not so toppling and scattered as i remembered. nothing wrong with that inherently, only that i am, and i thought i'd feel more comfortable here this time.
nope.
what i remembered was cramped, leaning hallways and a huge common room with furniture near piling on top of itself, people scrambling not to spill out of their chairs.
what changed? did i see too many stars in virginia? was the world there too wide, with the fields and neverending dirt roads? has everything just expanded?
in fact, the halls are long, too long, and the downstairs commons goes on and on, i'll never make it to the kitchen from the front porch. i'll never get to eat.

silly song

has a very upbeat sweet sound in my mind.

why don't you kill yourself
you don't deserve to live
you don't deserve to die
you don't deserve anything
you're doomed to crash and burn
and smash down everything you want to have and hold
you'll never find your home
nothing's left
burn one more

two nights dreamed of tall water.
the first, riding atop the tallest waves in train cars, saving the people and carrying the cats in boxes. gracie lou who close to my chest, while i call orders over the tumult.
and the second, on the tallest balcony, the tidal wave encroaching, worrying over the people and herding the cats into tubes. willikers the prominent tuxedo in a tunnel of black cats.
and that night, in the dark of the conscious world, the saloon deck of the ferry to manhattan, leaning over the railing, willing myself not to drop in.
and then the train with river wild, and finally seeing rex across broadway, in front of roma's pizza. we dance the distance until the lights change. our reunion on the streets and at the overcrowded dyke bar, cash only. but friday night and too many straight boys and overpriced weak whisky pushes us to the corner store, the tiny park, the street. rex doubts his inner queens compass and modern convenience leads us astray. we never do find the water, let alone the pier. what we find is a strangely deserted bright street with a rock. without protest, the rock lets us talk and sit and drink and piss and nearly fall asleep right on it, until rex gets us going, back to the subway and the walk through the garden apartments to the cluttered cozy jackson heights townhouse where we can whisky steelie sleep through the morning. except that rex has a bus to boston at dawn, so i oversleep alone, try to slip out quietly, but am thwarted by his mom, nourished with apple fritter, sweet talk, and decaf. the journey back to staten island takes two meandering hours, and the ferry is soothing this time.
ganas is a strange green maze with its own sidewalks, raised up from the street; is this the real city? there is a palpable tension between old and new, the steadfast 60s communards and the invigorated younger set, fresh for revolution. "it's time to turn, to revolve, it's always time," we say, as we huddle on our porches, sneak a smoke, scurry when we hear them coming.
and look, we do share the bounty! from the house pantry, jaclyn makes tunafish pizza with bacon grease white sauce, plus tomato cheese just for me. the days drift in the green heat; is this city real?
wednesday rolls around and i still don't make it up in time for the 730am planning meeting, especially not from the extra house at the bottom of the hill. i still can't handle time, i'm one step slow all day, and even run late to rex's show at the new york city bureau of human services queer division, and the building was even more swanky than the name. everyone is beautiful gayz and i'm so proud to see rex his cap his bow tie his perfect poems and py arrives right at the end, during the glitter rap dance party, the queer cafe unsure how not to shake. pyrite is a vision in the village, vegetarian and mostly sober, until we spot the stella. "it's the gay beer," we're told. we fold into a flock, a glistening smoking parade brigade, back to the dyke bar, cash only, whisky bourbon on special.
i'm sorry if i rambled your ear off, spun off too far, gave you too many smokes, spent all yr money on drinks, spit your powdered supplement on the ground, cried on your shoulder, hugged you too many times, kicked you for old times' sake. but we did laugh, and we remembered the ghosts, and we almost walked that secret path.
but it twisted and you left us underground in the sick yellow light, where we continued to follow that dolorous brick road through the tunnel, to the dive with the whisky and the filthy foggy back room. it's no wonder i can't remember what was said. but we make it our home, for now, and i could live here forever until rex persuades me to leave, he in his infinite wisdom, with his mind on new york time, and again quit my pointless flirting and i'll hold my brother's hand on the train to queens, and again i'll share your bed until morning, but this time i have a bus, and two ferrys, and ten trains to catch to make richmond tonight, where i'll hitch a ride to twin oaks with comrades, albeit strangers, friends who have never met.

i feel like i may have broken your heart without even trying, without doing anything, and it kills.
don't you know that my bones are crying, that i ache with loneliness too? that i hate it?

The Keep is a bright and cheery collective house in one half of a three-story duplex in DC's Park View neighborhood. With only six bedrooms, at first the place strikes me as a little small for a commune, but with a spacious kitchen and common area for the entire ground floor, I soon see why this is the Point A DC headquarters. The eight members of the Keep are young, vibrant, beautiful folks, bubbling over with sexual energy and crazy infectious laughter. More than a few of them went to Oberlin College, and it turns out there are mutual friends among us. It seems so silly to realize that the world is so impossibly small, but then again, of course it is.

I arrive just in time to be whisked away to a sold-out punk show, where two of my newest favorite bands are playing, and these kids just happened to have one extra ticket.... fate! A local electronic artist opens the show, followed by Girlpool, a duo who appear to be barely out of high school... reminds me of my first tour with SV way back in the day, in the summer following our senior year. Frankie Cosmos closes the night, the first show on her tour, so the band seems a little wobbly and still getting into a groove, but they still sound great to me. I buy their CD and the six of us somehow stuff ourselves back into Feonix's compact car to be driven back home....

"Home," rather, as I'm only here for a week, and the little patch of this place that is "mine" is a piece of memory foam mattress on the floor, in a row of mattresses on the floor, in a ridiculously low-ceilinged attic with no AC. This bizarre room is known as the Garret, an almost-4th floor, and it's where most of the Keep's numerous guests stay, including me and GPaul. Upon arrival, you will be ushered up the three flights of stairs (the last one little more than a wooden ladder) and you will hunch, crawl, or scuttle to the floor mattress of your choosing-- the ceiling is only 4 feet tall. But there are clean linens, towels, and condoms, all provided free of charge by your generous hosts. In the morning, you'll see there is one skylight window, higher the rest of the ceiling, where you can stand up to put on your pants. You're the last one awake, so turn off the fan and be grateful that even without it, this feels better than Austin in August.

The sunflowers sway in the tiny front garden, and the Keep is its own little universe in what is otherwise a pretty rough, run-down neighborhood. The world beyond the porch is a harsh one, and at night, we hear the people and the sirens screaming in the street. At night, the rats come out, and I see who the sunflowers really belong to.

whose hole ?

you're so fragile, sometimes I don't know how to hold you

You are so fragile, sometimes I don't know how to hold you. I want to be a soft place for you in a hard world, but sometimes I find myself craggy, a beach of broken glass + pebbles instead of sand. You don't deserve to wash up here. 

When I feel lost + broken, I pull away to spare you, but it apparently just makes things worse. We both fall backwards into silence + despair.

I want you to reach for me, but I've lost you too, now we're both gone. How many times this has happened, how we talk it out, but begin again.

I'm afraid that we're too broken to not break each other.

Or I'm a bird, and you're a fish, and air + water will never mix.

Like you can never hear the bug + cricket song, sometimes I feel like you

can't hear me. Like nothing I say will settle. How can I make

you hear me with a shell to your ear, and dreams of having fins

in the ocean, when all I can offer you is a craggy windy brutal beach.

How I try to make you happy but I only make you cry.

How you're longing for the ocean but I can only give you sky.

the porch problem

when you think you are performing for someone but there is in fact no audience 

when you try to create something for yourself but can't stop thinking about the impossible potential audience 

why I never write anymore 

why I sing only during dishes

when will I learn 

or figure how to forgive myself

amy and I talked about the selfishness of artists and wondered if that's what it takes to make anything worthwhile. do I have to stop everything else? not that it is anything but I haven't written in weeks, months, years. what do I want anymore? can I blame the place or the job or just me?

a borrowed beer on the porch, a beer too often. a smuggled smoke, ashes again. 

these small sacrifices grow a larger harvest. they don't answer the questions or the problem. 

where can I go? my home under the hill? I've almost stopped believing. 

there's truly no place for me. 

the truth is I'm stuck again and I hate myself for it. the worser truth is that I don't see any way out. even though there are people out there waiting for me, wanting me to bring the fire, I can't believe that it's the right fire. I only have one flame and it's gone out. nothing to be done now. 

have another smoke, another drink, don't think.
the porch is the only place you'll ever be, there's nothing here but what you see. 

I am the fake at all costs

dream

light and dark

we lived in the trees

they wanted to destiny Christmas

hooting people

we did rituals to protect ourselves

costumes and performance

mama there telling me all the truth

mama leading us esp the new generation

a woman has been coming to our side seeking shelter and solace

reformed

we perform rituals to cleanse her

hash

shiner

(blood wine for dark purpose )

she's telling tales

we're stuck as the rifleman makes rounds

ruthless. shooting even our youngest without power

we are all women and old men

she's here in the very center with the most powerful ones

I left them downstairs to protect abatha (the most powerful of all of us, but stuck in a coma and helpless)

when I crawled away trip grabbed my hand and wouldn't let me. I worried they'd shoot me right then, that they'd see me.

but I made it up to the core

my mama in a trance

my costume comedic for joy and mirth (all straps and buckles, my

hairy legs and open skirt)

my clown calling

she tells us she misses that power

details the dark ritual

three times at least she fucked her dark lord, got pregnant and transplanted the fetus to one of our light wombs

abatha, so powerful. she claims that's why

and me

so that's why I was three weeks late

dry birth

covered in scales

made wicked from the start

but where is my power ?

I'm just a jester

so glad mama isn't here to hear

but she most know somehow....

and disgusted to know my true father

and that he wanted to fuck me

and laylee helped us protect the chrosmas things

sort and hide and disguise

morgan had made a beautiful story with wonderful illustrations

I would die to save it

hail to the ringworm queen

It's like a ton of bricks have hit me, realizing you're gone, Brittany. Working the last six days without you has been rocky, so please excuse me if I frumble. we're struggling to treat the worst wound ever seen in the history of apa and it's located in the place where you're missing. you are the heart, the strongest and longest running part of the cat team, and it's unlikely that we'll be able to find a transplant.

When I first arrived at Austin Pets Alive, I was thrown into the cattery mid-kitten season, alone, sink or swim, with only a smidgen of first-hand cat medical knowledge and zero shelter experience. Laylee introduced me to Brittany as a fellow introvert: the first thing I learned was that we shared anxieties, fears, sensitivities, sadness. And still I saw her whip out a smile for every visitor and watched her adopt out cats with such confidence, I knew I would be okay.

Brittany was always there to answer every question, gently offer advice, and quietly provide feedback without ever criticizing. Without her guidance, reassurance, and closing-time venting smoke breaks, I would've drowned. Each poop picture, each sketchy adopter, each dumb question, she would always try to help. Any time a situation was so draining, so painful, so difficult that i wanted to give up, i found myself asking "what would Brittany do?" every time, I found the answer was the most selfless option.

YES she would kiss anybody, funguys and scabies babies alike

YES she would stay up all night, just in case.

YES she would just go ahead and offer everybody a whole nother can.

and by golly if she didn't know the answer, she would go home and research until she was on the road to be the next expert

I saw her treat every life as equal, deserving, and precious, and I wanted to be that good.

But she wanted reassurance too. She never thought she was good enough, always wanted to be better. She set herself at such high standards that she set the standard for all of us. She wanted to be able to give them everything. She took the worst ones, she held and healed and coaxed and loved, and I saw them transform, just from being around her. How proud she was of each Dazey's grad, how she brought them to cattery when they cleared, each one a present at our door. each accomplishment, each life, and Brittany bubbling over with anticipation to put the soul on a name tag, and sometimes crying to say goodbye, although they were only one building over, never really gone.

you will never really be gone. your blood sweat tears soul in the walls, in the concrete, in the porous germy crevices of the blueboxes we so despise. you are laughing in our hearts, still creeping and scheming.

If you are not a magic ringworm glitter elf, then I do not believe in anything.

I wish I could remember everything, but I only have pieces:

when you taught me to set live traps for stray kittens and instead we caught possums

when virulent calicivirus struck our cattery

when humpty's eye exploded

when alvin's back fell off

when lucy's eye was leaking blood

when my whole skin went crazy

when yr whole skin went crazy

when i watched cats transform just being with you

when i was so anxious about deep cleaning after calici that you wrote 6 pages of step-by-step instructions for me

when you told me mikey was your new boyfriend and i wanted her to be mine before i even met her

when you saved roger outside on the sidewalk from running to the mouths of anxious dogs

when jeanne died in the street two days after she got adopted

when minerva died from pneumonia and i wasn't there to hold her

when i realized how much separate history we shared

when you introduced me to gracie lou, "USE EXTREME CAUTION," but you believed in her and helped me take her home

All these times I loved you.

how every cat's face

every cat's fate

how each question

how your reassurance saved us

how you would never abandon anyone ever

how the last thing you wanted was for anybody to suffer

how we were made to stay in our own buildings and pushed apart, i'm afraid, i'm sorry, forever

how i can't recall our last conversation

how i can't stop listening for your laugh

I don't know what I'm going to do without you. Who will compare leg hair in our cut off jeans in the sweltering summer in the height of kitten season? Who will snort with laughter at my terrible jokes, and whine about our angst for hours after closing time, and giggle "I'll grab your butt" so that I don't litter?

We will never replace you. But we can strive to honor you by smiling at strangers, kissing crusty cats, and treating every creature with kindness.

https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/Brittanysfund

I don't appreciate being called rude and I don't like being told what to do

dream space

I must've known it was a dreAm because I started writing everything down in the middle, needing to remember.  

four clans. a prophecy of course. 

they had been tracking us for years, they had seen it all and put the pieces together. 

I don't really know why I'm here or what's going on. we're gathering in a huuuuuuge auditorium, hundreds of people. I can't settle on a place to sit bc I'm all alone. I stumble into an area where no one is sitting and realize it must be reserved for the performance. woops. scuttle into a corner and settle in.  and I'm not wrong, there are male acrobats in shiny sequins who spring out somewhere along the way. so extreme and over tr top wow. later I'm fiddling with something (a mouse maybe?) and they see me and call me out. how??

why?? they escort me out or I'm trying to walk somewhere else and get intercepted. they put me on a spaceship with dozens of others. (mostly women?) I'm starting to see differences between the people, between the nations. two are more powerful, bigger, more numbers. one of these is flashy sequin decadence pop and the other is more nationalist harder military but still decadent in a different way. 

how to explain the others???? 

in the bathroom one woman showed me a picture of a harpy, "this is what you will be. this is what I am."

there is a sense of death surrounding them. they would rather kill each other than have the prophecy come to pass. 

and I do feel that I have something of a choice. people are pulling me like something can change. it's not set in stone. 

then she rescues me. I don't remember the details but she finds me in the crowd and smuggles me out to her own ship. at first I'm confused. later I'm in love. these are my people. and we are fugitives. 

later we get separated and I'm supposed to follow her by piloting my own ship which of course I've never done before. it's okay at first but I just

can't get the hang of it fast enough and I lose them. I think I crash and they find me. 

they're still trying to figure out if I am the one they think. they ask all kinds of strange and invasive questions. "did you have the clear coccidia?" and my family. supposedly my seemingly normal mother was a harpy too and could transform at will. And yet they're all being so nice, no one wants to upset me, no one hurts me. they must think I'm powerful. 

I have a mouse friend from somewhere. actually it might be a person in mouse form that I'm watching over. that other hRpy's daughter? she transformed her own child into a mouse to make a point. they would rather die than see the wrong future. 

I'm carrying her everywhere but she gets away from me. I crawl under a huge gate to get outside and find her but it's too late. there's a creature in the bushes crouching down.. I think maybe she's still out there but the creature smacks his jaw open closed one time and I see the tail inside. 

I know she'll find me. I'm writing everything down in orange crayon. I know she'll come back for me. 

why can't I just relax ?

revolution

make more art
consume more art
schedule yourself better

be yr own
girl gang

I can already feel the new year crackling even through the haze of being sick and the pounds of phlegm in my chest and head. it's alive! the year of freedom and bliss, we already called it.

we freed the fish and the fish freed us.

time to reset

just keep forgetting to take your pills.

follow the smell of piss till it's all clean. 

remember who you love, who loves you. 

expect that nothing will come back. 

there is only the cat and the ache in your back.