threshold

threshold contains 4 essays, originally written in Brian Blanchfield's Advanced Nonfiction workshop. For a few weeks after the class ended I worked and reworked the essays, attending to critique, tying threads between the pieces, and fixing all sorts of mistakes. I printed some 900 pages in the top floor of the UofI library, carried them to a basement with a papercutter, dragged them home, aligned the pages, clamped, punched holes, and bound them with various threads. I posted about them on my instagram and a very lovely bunch of folks have bought nearly all of them. Every copy got a special scribble and/or message in the front and back. I wrapped them in brown paper bags, addressed them and distributed them by mail or through friends or on foot.

The essays, in order of appearance, are:

○ backyard birthday or new moon passing from Virgo into Libra:
I start off processing my mom's death when I was 8, moving for the first time in my life toward a solid and tangible memory of my childhood. I talk about embodied spatial memory, comfort in the esoteric, the moon, and absence.

҉   rhizome : toolbox:
This was my first essay in the class and I think it shows a bit. It's taking on a bit too many topics at once, but mainly: my relationship with my family (my mom dying, my dad living and teaching me from his experience of loss, how I as a sterile trans person fit into the paradigm of lineage, an intimate read of my mom's journals). I think it's about growth & inheritance.

⁖ HUNGER NETWORK:
Here I move out of childhood and into an exploration of trans becoming. I try to trace the thread of how I got to my then-current formulation of myself. This is primarily through 1) gleaming soul connections to other gender non-conforming people and 2) works of media that I read very closely and obsessively.

- still:
I deliberately had a much tighter focus for this essay, the final one for the class. It exists within the duration of my final pose for a life drawing class.

I've only got two copies left, one for me and one for lending. If you ever happen to be physically near me I'd be happy to lend it to you! I think I've finally come to terms with the fact that it was a "limited run". I would like to revisit it someday to make it available digitally (since it's a really weirdly formatted .docx)... Emphasis on someday!