ọla

stills from my debut short Baptized by Fire

Hector Guimard: banquette de fumoir (bench for a smoking parlour), 1897

Izzy Ravas, from her novel titled Disarm: A Forbidden Romance (What We Don't Say,)

Krishna Reddy - The Famous Jester.  Etching. 

naomi campbell shot by ellen von unwerth for vogue march 1998

2023

Per recent conversations and academic and self study - I have now found the strenght to take it upon myself to really question and redefine my gender identity…I can confirm I am more confused than ever…but it is inspiring feelings and thoughts on sustainable freedoms. Defining sexuality for me was so much easier- inescapable even. I want who I want and that was very difficult to deny… but in self expression I can honestly admit that I am more penetrable- unconscious- than I know.It has always been easier to deny myself. I believe that this is a universal truth…There are questions I imagine we generally fail to ask. As we are defined from the moment we are realised in conception- born confined and into prescribed definitions, when do/can we ask; “who have I been told I am? What am I? Who can I/do I want to be?” And if we dare to ask, why are we told our answers aren’t real? It’s alarming -to me- because my learned/perceived g.identity-woman- has absorbed significant amounts of trauma-individually and collectively-of which I am preoccupied by and in turn attached to…though I’ve thought of nothing but escape and escaping. Discovering that -in this nightmarish world, my dreams of better for women(a worthy but costly focus) are accompanied by a potential of never transcending the terrors of gender binaries. It is no wonder why we drift through life aspiring to fit into unexamined linear pockets- why we mostly never dare to question if they wholly keep us. i have spent my little life tortured...wanting and wondering-hurting when I cannot recognise or find the person I was taught to be. Forgotten yesterday,Soft today,hard tomorrow- to be misaligned with an identity you've believed to be your very own truth and birthright …is a harrowing but radically shifting concept if we can simply just regard it. I can say now that I am woman but not entirely so. I am not man but not entirely so. There isn't one,of the two, that can define my life force completely...in acknowledging that, most of the things I've dreamed for and of self ultimately will change as i have accepted the gift offering of orienting truths streamlined according to my authentic desires and expressions.In this relay of oppression - gender is the first leg that takes the baton of living courageously in truth.it stills and steals and so until further notice I am simply human- on a spectrum in mind, spirit and soul. undefined, drifting in and out of space without permissions but mine to be- Demifluid. as I always have and as I please.

Vintage I guess

in a sentimental mood | victor m. alonso

Phantom Star - BSD

wpl, Black Smith, 2023

Anne Sexton, from “Doors, Doors, Doors,” in The Complete Poems [ID in alt text]