you see, i am alive
a wood dragon great unfolding mystery banal and beautiful sphynx dancing february heartland mysteries digest
“…real fire is in the wood.”
- craig lesley
“the purpose of death is the release of love.”
- laurie anderson
“you see, i am alive, i am alive”
drag names
kidney cleanse
prize apart
milkweed pod
receive airdrop
kc potholes
chasing waterfalls
wetlands vanish
alarming warmth
sluggish bowels
schlocky plot
end of history
said-esque comment
SETI satellite
radio silence
careful reading
look at yourself
when mtv classic plays stuff from when you were a kid
instead of, like, steely dan, pete frampton and white snake
“cinammon girl” - named his band after crazy horse
i’m 12 but i get it - i’m her and i’m not
i’m itching a lot - having trouble with names
if they’re not on the platform, do they even exist?
joni, joanna, covered as muzak
how can you ever put a price tag on this?
how can i ever pay some of you back?
but, something about violence —
about not wanting my loved ones to die by something banal and gross,
like a police chase or anonymous bullet
about how acting from fear creates the thing we least want
about how everything i hate out there i must learn to recognize and love in myself
about the support required to be able to even look at yourself —
or anything else —
look at this —
please can we die with meaning, with grace?
please can we die because we’ve learned all we could and it’s time to move on
not just because we’ve made such a quietly normal mess of our life that death is the only way left to get us unstuck?
i don’t want to live forever
i don’t want to be plastic
is it death i’m afraid of or is it existence?
“mom send me money now, i’m gonna make it somehow, i need another chance -- you know your baby loves to dance, yeah, yeah, yeah—“
unknown, i call you, glittering sphynx —
dark one, i call you, bringer of peace —
fuchsia dragon, entreat you, flowers and sweetness —
please can this be a purging, a vomit?
a growing, releasing, letting go, giving up —
something toxic and ancient, a blood-let for ghosts
please can we learn to say yes with each choice
to the world that we know dreams un-made under this?
how naming can be both aid and impediment
how “you need so much to be someone else”
how the crows still congregate some nights on the roof
how the groundhog saw their shadow or didn’t
how the sun still spills warmth over all of it
all of it
dance with us, now, dance and remind us —
of our beauty, our hate, our rawest, our depths,
of our late-winter sun shone through dread, smog and dust,
and our weird sulfur popcorn smell gleaned off the river’s dark face
of our feuds and our fights,
of our sound of a car crash,
our toddler, our teenage, our near-death, our innocent —
remind us we’re innocent.
remind us we’re good.
remind us we’re medicine.
remind us we’re dance —
quite frankly, i’m very discombobulated. i suddenly have so much empathy for so many, including (but not limited to) my parents, who were self-employed pretty much the whole time i was growing up — the audacity of starting a business before the internet, in the 80s and 90s in the midwest — or in 2020, or in 2008 — is there ever a good time to start a business? have a child? give your life to an art work? risk your heart with a marriage or even a date?
“small business” doesn’t even begin to encompass it, is actually quite condescending now that i think about it. i wonder if this is the closest thing i’ll have to being a parent? so much out of my control, so much fear, so much i can’t anticipate, so many invisible victories, so, so many mistakes.
i feel an incredible imperative to metabolize everything i’ve ever experienced as wisdom to support me in this process, to avoid the avoidable, to make space for all the new ways i must mess up to become the person who can actually succeed in this, whatever success may reveal itself to look and feel like — to really look at myself, open-hearted and ruthless, to acknowledge my will to harm and to love it — to clear, claim and cultivate my center until integrity and excellence spring forth from the soil of my practice in organic response to all the countless big and little moments calling for my gifts, or my humanity, or my simple, divine willingness to show up and be present, put my finger somewhere and catch a particular pulse, allow for the tying of a particular knot.
i think this is life, art, family, community, business — i think this is life and i’m just now starting to really get it. my practice and process feel as important as play, unstructured time and rest (not strong suits). my back hurts, my ego lies in tatters, my heart is a fountain, temple and lake and i end most nights feeling deeply satisfied and ‘right’ in my time and place, if a bit deranged and with a to-do list that will never be finished.
managing this building / studio / temple / vortex does feel a lot like my relationship with my nibblits - they are at once so incredibly dependent and also completely their own little cosmos, each with their own dreams and destiny, an entire lifetime ahead of them to develop their capacity for pleasure and beauty and learning and violence. not that i think my work is actually comparable to parenting (the hardest job, bar none), or that any of what i’m tending will grow legs some day and start rampaging across the landscape, but then again we are living in an age of monstrous, many-headed multi-national conglomerates that seem to have gained a certain zombie near-sentience and are gobbling up any and everything in their paths, many of whose legacies seem starkly separate from their original intents. wonder what they could be if we really listened? if we had the tools to open ourselves to the screaming, blazing, brilliant ‘NO’ and ‘YES’ required to right our collective wrongs and find our way back to a path that isn’t certain apocalypse? if we could work together, hold and transform our triggers, be with our trauma and harvest the future we actually want for our descendants from our willingness to be stretched, smothered and utterly transformed by the love that is our very essence?
i guess what i’m trying to say is — i’m scared, i’m delighted, because i think i’m really doing what i want to be doing with my life after many years trying, failing, falling into the diseases of this time and wandering in the wilderness of healing and growth to get back to a place where i could take such a massive risk and actually feel somehow normal in doing it. the spirits lured me here with grand visions, many of which have already come to pass and keep knocking me on my ass with how beautiful and perfect they are, the people who keep coming out of the woodwork to help me hold them, the support from my family, my partner, shamanic community, spirits…i’ve never been intimidated by big dreams, have chased them all over the country all my life. what they never mention is that a lot of manifesting my purpose boils down to admin, admin, admin, emails, egos, cleaning toilets, repeat. and i guess that’s also sort of just life.
all that said, i still need your help —
1 — the fund-raiser for the studio has transitioned to an evergreen donation link because we need more support to make things work in these tightest of tight first few months. we didn’t get everything that we wanted, and that’s probably ok — i probably couldn’t decide on what color to paint the lobby right now even if i could afford it. right now i’m focused on the bottom-line stability for the business. we need help to make ends meet and also need a little more slack for all the things we can’t anticipate — water utility deposit was the most recent, i won’t tire you with a list because we all have these things in our contemporary life it’s just exponentially expanded for a business!
if you have anything to give at this time, we — me, the teachers, tenants and staff, students, community and spirits who tend this beautiful little healing arts vortex — deeply, sincerely appreciate it and are always super grateful for any prayers and offerings made in support of our continued growth.
https://givebutter.com/help-innerspace
2 — i have officially begun submitting the book to agents. if you have a rad fiction agent you think might appreciate a drug / drag / sci-fi coming-of-age fantasia and help it find its place in a world that i believe actually really needs it, please hit me up. and even if you don’t, please imagine / make prayers and offerings to the world in which this book has found its perfect niche and is bearing fruit beyond my wildest imaginings, including money to support me in writing the next one but most importantly access to its necessary audience. i have tended rootless since its inception as a tree, dark cherry to be exact. it just needs to find the right birds, bats, squirrels and rivers to digest its fruits and drop its pits into fertile minds and hearts. or something like that. see it so, may it be, in a way that is good for life, thank you so much.
ilusm. keep calling your reps, going to protests, cooking for friends, risking showing up. keep taking that next uncomfortable step towards life. whatever you’re working alone at this moment, pat yourself on the freaking back for how far you’ve come and find a friend or group or spirit or therapist or tree to help you hold it. we need your medicine. period. i am willing to stake my life on that. thank you so much for gracing this planet.
may you know boundless, brilliant grace and patience and fierce compassion for your self and every one else
xx, alexis
+++ POETRY GODDEXX BLESS IT!!!
taylor byas - ‘dear moon’ - ‘and so you want a poem’
colleen j. mcelroy - ‘the lost breath of trees’
h.d. - ‘projector’ - ‘priapus’
jake skeets - ‘a walk in tsaile’