Eye Rolls & Body Rolls

“When my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me-it still sometimes happens-and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous-not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance… . That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… . That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time… . That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and it’s much more meaningful… . The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”

When this happens to animals, when it happens with physical growth it is called "indeterminate growth" - there are fish and snakes that do this, kangaroos keep growing all their lives, to an extent.

You do this with your personality.

You, your *self* is a leviathan, always growing and often hidden and never fully understood but it's that indeterminate growth I want you to focus on.

Your self is not set right now. You still have growing to do.

If you are fifteen, if you are fifty, if you are a hundred and five, you still have growing to do.

Your brain builds and reinforces neural connections as long as blood is transporting oxygen to those three pounds of meat in your skull. You are not predestined for SHIT. You are a creature with connections in your brain that outnumber the fucking stars, you live a new life full of new opportunities and choices from one moment to the next and that is the only kind of magic that I care about in the universe because that is the only kind of magic - other than love - that is real.

You are your own maker I think that's neat.

Queer as in sex ed for kids and the elderly, queer as in free condoms in old folks homes, queer as in destigmatize STIs and stop calling them dirty, queer as in pro-sex workers and decriminalization

Queer as in decolonisation, prison and police reform/abolition, as in education reform, as in medical reform, as in harm reduction clinics, as in not only more women's shelters but also men's shelters and gender-neutral shelters

Queer as in anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-transphobia, anti-queerphobia, anti-intersexism, anti-aphobia, anti-fatphobia, anti-islamophobia, and anti-antisemitism

Queer as in "yeah my gender IS sparkly blue and my sexuality is one you've never heard of and that's okay"

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“The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.”