So along with my thesis and the ever back-shelved history of forest defense, i’ve decided to start working on some memoirs. Not my whole life kind of “autobiography,” but just a collection of vignettes of the last several years. I have several motivations, first and foremost being that my memory is very slippery. If i dont write my memories down, they will slip away, leaving vague imprints in the forms of values, inclinations, and opinions, without the textures, the life and blood, of what created them. Secondly, i have spent a lot of time thinking about radical love. I’ve taught a few workshops and had endless conversations… and quite a bit of practice. I have thought seriously about dedicating myself to writing a zine on radical love after i graduate. I probably will, but I also feel that nothing can explain a philosophy of relating to the world better than the raw and imperfect lived experience of it. It is a way of exploring praxis. Thirdly, I hope that the self-reflexivity of a memoir project will help me make sense of “self,” as small as i am and as big as i am, in the context of nature, culture, radicalism, activism, family, relationships, community, privilege, gender, etc., in a way that lends to a sense of situatedness in a postmodern/hyper-individualized/uber-suffring world.
Here’s my hope: These are the memoirs of a polynomial creature striving to stay sacred and passionate in the heart of civilization. I relocate pansexuality and polyamorory from “identity” to art, values, and political and cultural criticism. The multiple and circuitous journeys of this life shape a praxis which begins with the heart and the moves through politics of relation, activism, theory, and embodied spirituality. This is a kind of manifesto for radical praxis spoken through a life imperfectly lived.
I’ve been writing stories in my free time, and soon enough i’ll start sharing them here.
