The Lost Kid.

Alexis Diggs. She/They. Artist. Human. In Pursuit of Autonomous Personhood.

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I WANT YOU TO BE MINE. SELFISHLY, THOUGHTLESSLY, MINE

@vaitiolo ; // “Orpheus and Eurydice”, by Virgil; // H.G. Wells, from a letter to Rebecca West (w. April, 1913); // “No, I don’t miss the dissipated night’s”, by Alexander Pushkin (tr. by D.M. Thomas) (1832); // “Blue is the Warmest Color”, by Ghalia Lacroix (2013); // “The Voyage Out”, by Virginia Woolf (1915); // Virgina Woolf; // “Soft Human”, by Emery Allen (2019)

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picture from my friend’s London travels

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"And I cried... for all of the women who stretched their bodies for civilizations, only to find ruins." Sonia Sanchez

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I. At the end of each day, week, month, year, life…I hope that you can say that you basked in the sun. That you slayed your dragons. Felt your grief, made space for your joy. Fell in love with the newness and opportunity that each day gifts us, and took every leap of faith that you could. That you did not succumb to the phantom-hood of existence when you were supposed to be living a life. But what I hope for you most of all is that when you are preparing to embark on your next journey, your next life, you can do so with no regrets about the way that you spent your last one.

Alexis Rae

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EXERCISES IN FUTILITY//what to do when the world is on fire.

I often find myself poring over the inner workings and intricacies of political and personal power; fussing with its associations and connotations, reflecting on the contexts in which it might be celebrated, researching how it is acquired, and wondering how its notions were conceived. If it can be bent or broken to the will of its author, or if its submission is reserved only for a certain kind of people, the threads of threat interwoven into its design. I think about what it must feel like to dig your heel into someone’s back and discard them once it’s certain they’ve been ruined; to toss them into the canyon from which they had been plucked, and believe it kinder for them to have been subjugated rather than to have been given no breath at all. What a gift it must be that someone even deigned to notice them in the first place; how lucky are they. I have concluded that these are the actions of someone not doing much real thinking or feeling at all.

Yes, I guess, we could ascribe the concept of meaninglessness to the duration of our days and toss life aside, dismissing it as a manifestation of the zany and absurd, both patternless and uninspired. I suppose it could be argued that this existence is just a propulsion into the inevitability of an ending; you breathe then you don’t, you fail or you try, you wish or you woe, you do then you die. But then I remember the world is on fire and always has been. Suddenly the asylum of my ignorance is evaporated; I can’t grasp what it means to be engulfed in those flames and hold your screams hostage. What is the value of amplifying your suffering? Of holding the whole of your oppressor’s violence close to your chest, conspiring with it as if you benefit from its secrecy? I have been dropped into this existence against my will, and been burned by its bones despite my wishes. I have inherited emotional barrenness, been torn apart by the underpinnings of fascism, and been ensured a role of complacency and complicity as a constituent of its lands. By being born, I am in part, at fault. How do I undo things that I have not done, and remain unbroken by the weight of the world’s failures being whispered in my ears? What am I to do besides wail in the streets?

Maybe…. I can try my best, put one foot in front of the other, work for better. Potentially, I could believe that there is power to be had in living a life in which I allow my dreams to run amuck, wild, free, and full of hope. Perhaps I might attempt to muster the courage to hold cynicism’s hand, let if feel safe enough to whisper its truth in my ear: that it too desperately waits for someone to prove it wrong, to show it heaven. It seems that this world is full of monsters, their teeth sharp, cut with hatred, and polished with need. But there is so much might tucked in the pleas we whisper, cry, shout into the abyss; can someone hold space for me? I have lost my hope; does someone have enough to share? I can’t see myself clearly, would you please be my loving mirror? I see not a single reason to continue on, for my grief has split me open and ripped me apart, cleaning its teeth on the decay of my aspirations. I fear for a world in which you don’t exist; who would want to hear what I have to say? who wouldn’t?

Alexis Rae