Aimee Herman's Blog, page 14

Sunday, September, 17th BOOG Fest Performance

I’m very excited to perform alongside David Lawton and Zita Zenda, my Hydrogen Junkbox poetry bandmates at this year’s BOOG City Poets’ Theatre Night at Sidewalk Cafe located at 94 Ave A in NYC. We will be performing a new, theatrical version of our song, Rice Paper Heart.

The event is from 5-7pm. Event is free, but please come and support this venue. They have great food! 

A great line-up also featuring the thought-provoking poetry of my spouse, Trae Herman-Durica!

5:00 pm: Welcome to Boog City 11 – 9th Boog Poets’ Theater Night, featuring:

5:00 p.m. “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” by Robert Moulthrop

5:15 p.m. “I wore suspenders …” by Trae Herman-Durica

5:30 p.m. “Dating van Gogh” by Francine Witte

5:45 p.m. “A Butterfly for Nabokov” by LuLu LoLo

6:00 p.m. “Rice Paper Heart” by Hydrogen Junkbox

6:15 p.m. “Charity” by Austin Alexis

6:30 p.m. “Conspiracy Theory: The Mysterious Death of Dorothy

Kilgallen” by Davidson Garrett

6:45 p.m. “The Guides of March” by John J. Trause

Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", BOOG fest, David Lawton, Hydrogen Junkbox, NYC poetry and theatre, Rice Paper Heart, Trae Durica, Zita Zenda

Allergic Reaction

first published by great weather for MEDIA

 

 

It all began with an eyelash. Perhaps poison ivy found in Marquette, Nebraska. Or maybe some dust mites.

After returning from a two-week trip out west, I found myself in the ER of a hospital room in Brooklyn, covered in curious and extremely itchy red marks. As usual, I do my best to pretend away my body but when the blotches spread to my eye, my spouse insisted on a medical intervention.

As we waited, I tried my hardest not to itch, so I forced my attention toward the television above me. A new game show where contestants could win up to one million dollars just for naming that tune! I had twenty dollars in my wallet and two college degrees.

I always know I’m really sick when my appetite goes away. I usually dream about dinner while I’m eating lunch, so after spending an entire day with maybe 100 calories in me, I knew something was wrong.

I stared at the welts of varying shapes on my arms, legs, two on my belly, gathering beside my hairline. I imagined being this itchy for the rest of my life.

The smell of the waiting room was a mixture of fast food, sour cologne, and August sweat. I turned toward my mate and said, “Remember that eyelash? I can’t remember what state that was.”

“Minnesota, I think.”

“Yeah,” I paused. “I wished I were dead.”

I’m unclear where the tradition started that a stray eyelash gave permission for one wish if blown off the tip of a finger. But I feel like it had always been there.

I started to cry or maybe I hadn’t stopped.

“Do you still feel that way?”

“Not right now,” I spoke.

“I think it was from the dog’s fur, actually. I don’t think it was an eyelash.”

When my name was finally called, the nurse weighed me and asked about height and habits. Then she sent me back to the waiting room until the doctor was available.

Recently, an almost-stranger grabbed my forearm and asked about the state of my skin. “You get attacked by some zoo animals?” they asked.

I can’t remember any time I understood my skin. It was never smooth and unbothered. And if it was, those memories have all dug themselves away.

When my name was finally called again, I was sent to a room with beds beside each other. “Take the second one,” a nurse instructed.

A young, long-lashed physician assistant approached me. I removed my sweater, so she could observe all of my itchy constellations.

I watched her burnt caramel eyes approach a diagnosis.. “Any idea what this might be?”

Suddenly, I panicked. I’m paying $150 to diagnose myself?

“I’ve been traveling the past two weeks, so I’ve experienced different environments. Been outside a lot. Maybe…poison ivy? I’m extremely allergic.”

“Everyone is, really,” the doctor said.

“I don’t know. Maybe bug bites?” I don’t mention the eyelash and my fear that wishes (if wished enough) do come true. I don’t mention my fear that these welts are the beginning of my end.

“I’m gonna put you on steroids for a few days and some Benadryl.”

“But you don’t know what this is. But—”

“They’re all treated the same,” the doctor interrupts.

I used to be allergic to milk. Then, perfume. For a significant portion of my life: men. On and off, I’m also allergic to any derivative of happiness.

I’ve wished on eyelashes my whole life. Over three decades of birthday candle wishes. Two or three shooting stars. I have no memory of any wishes coming true.

Day three of these unconfirmed mountains of itchiness and I do my best NOT TO ITCH. My spouse tells me they are fading. I wish I could wish this itch away, but I’ve sworn myself away from fallen eyelashes and my birthday is a long way off.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", allergic reaction, great weather for media, meant to wake up feeling, mental illness, sensitive skin

An Interview with Writer j/j hastain

Colorado-based writer, j/j hastain, is a flood of words. An ocean of energies and crossings. In j/j’s newest collection, Priest/ess Trilogy, worlds are entered and examined. Gender is questioned. Body becomes a new alphabet. After digging through these texts, I sent along some questions to j/j and was lucky to receive incredible words back.

 

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AIMEE:  With all that is troubling our country these days–doors and walls and STOP signs and HATE crimes, I want to know what keeps you here. What allows you to endure?  

j/j:  Here is where?

You mean what keeps me on planet? Not taking my own life and not yet having had it taken by another? Or here—on the precipice of vitality? Here—intentionally inhabiting body as it grows me through from Richter (various rough realities in on-planet trajectories) to psychic, material and energetic riches (realties which exceed on-planet rough patches)? Here—as in legs wide open to the oncoming matter? Mouth open to the gale? Hands open to the pelting hail? Here—the tender pride of complex gender between lover and me—between me and inner circle? Here—in the bedchamber where the light is taking over—finally leading to unconditional love songs of merge undeniable? Particles burgeoning to touch other particles in a manner conducive to both on-planet and off-planet versions of heaven?

My sense is it took more to get me here than it takes to keep me here (even if I have experienced it taking quite a lot to keep me here at times in process). Pre-incarnate negotiations can be complex—and I was not positive I was going to return—not because of lack of love for Earth and her inhabitants—but because of other commitments off-planet I was busy completing. Erecting crystal castles (no joke!)—creating heaven off-planet just as Gaia’s glistening age ensures by dimensional communion with God—heaven is possible on-planet.

It came down to this: if I chose to come here I—personally—believe it only makes sense to stay here, creating.

For me, endurance is plainly about will. Quite different than being—which is what “here” is all about. So—I guess I see the two correlating but they are certainly doing different things in/as me.

A:   What elicits your words and the directions they take?

 j/j: In many ways it’s a kind of matured obedience (not the negative implications of that word)—as refinement in (co) cadence—that drives the language. Drives. But the direction it takes is its own. Just like East and all of its emanations are its own, same with South, West, North, Below, Above and Within. Within is its own directionality. Due to this, Within goes Within.

What elicits the words in the first place? Cross-world alchemies and the reverb (intonation/vibration) that carries information back and forth between figural ‘lovers’ across spans. Words such as these—bridges and bows. Words—conduits, conductors, creases and crimps—artful agendas. Words—‘safe words’ or “no” or give it to me as a thought-form (push me past where I perceive my edge to be while fucking me, baby) between gritty bodies in the bed. Words—carnage of forefather dying into the land and becoming the beets and other root vegetables that forefather’s offspring picks to cook for dinner.

A:  Can you talk about the disrobing of your vocabulary?

j/j:  I am all about the disrobing that happens in charged scenario when someone is taking these robes off of me. Heat, dizziness. The musk of animals preparing to mate. Therefore—it could happen with most pleasure for me by nakedness of content, of cadence—even of the fact of writing becoming light (life)—by another wanting to see it naked.

Sure—this is the lover—but in this way—any reader can make the page blush like a virgin so happy on her wedding night to be joined, finally, with her Beloved. The naked page a “her”—though not necessarily a traditional (or gen) female nor a femme.

A:  In Priest/ess, you wrote, “We can be ethical harvesters of secrets. We can make secrets edible to that most enigmatic child: the third eye.” Can you talk about your practice of spirituality?

j/j:  Both secretive and extremely transparent—like all useful tools which assist in processes enhancing soul evolution would need be. When dealing transparently in the languages of secrets what would arise? Tracts and ducts wherein and whereby Divine could_________. To stimulate divinity by divining (designing) a space? What lyrical stimulus would flow? What idea by which wisdom becomes queered? Modern mystic is so—not by their own self-distinction as such—but by the sound of their gesture coming back to them. Like in Shamanism—it is the space-made—then inhabited by Divine—that is a fullness able to be used for positive transactions, transmissions, transmutations in the world (due to it touching another).

I want to provide a place in the world, on planet—where spirit can spurt because I have been rited as a place where spirit can spurt—and spirit spurting—offering another an opportunity to be involved in such elixir, potion, Amrita—the Grail waters filling the lake.

Any act dedicated to Divine—to God/dess or “Ma”—can be her efflorescence, her flowering. Festivity of flow. It’s a love thing—an offspring thing—what comes from me vivifies in a manner similar to from whence it came.

What are my values?

The Beloved, queer aphrodisiac (queer aphrodisiac is my patriotism). Reach (through queerness or through that which is not queer: both result in knowledge having been queered), receive and offer as what make the lemniscate circuit whole. Creatrix gender the genius activator.

A:  How do you harvest your history?

j/j:  Following guidance from “Ma” to the “T.” Taking great care with what I am being shown must be done for the betterment—for the best foot forward and best face expressing.

Literal answer to this—I once kept all of my old journals and diaries locked in a blue chest. This chest looked like the kind one would find pirate treasure inside. I would visualize it—sinking into the deep and never being found. Covered over with sea dirt and foam—sea detritus—from the urges of the rocking. Kept—truly kept by The Mother. Keeping me a secret. Keeping her promise to me.

When I was guided by Ma to open the blue chest and begin to integrate with an urgency I had never previously felt I did as I was told. I like doing what I am told in this type of regard. It is kinky. What I found within? Overwhelm of psychic spills, love poems, wanderlust widdershins, evening renderings, seedlings of the queer manifesto. I was shocked. Who I am was gathered right there—in a compostable heap below my wide-open legs. How would I integrate this? What could be harvested? By what manner made most sense?

By music.

A:  How do you feed your present(s)? 

j/j:  Sense of self. Moving identity. Trans names. Presence in present tense is quite infused for the multi-dimensionalist. To be—though the most basic of human birthrites—is sometimes not the easiest place to be. What brightens it? Mystical gender. Mystical gender the face —the emanation that comes off of sexual chi. How does my sexual chi dress? What are its chosen mantles, negligees?

A:  While reading your books, there were times I would just flip to a page and follow its language in the way I did when I read Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It felt like stones toward a path, guiding me. What was your intention in writing these books?

j/j:  Intention has the word tent in it. Refuge. For whom? For whomever comes with open heart into the tent with intent to enable hearth. It is less the “who” and more the “how” of orientation. An ape would do well in here—loving the world it loves. This notion—of “toward a path” is aligned with what I want. Living pages leaning. The full forest of trees—the mouth full of songs—the body full of moans—the being full of promise finding itself in a state of promises fulfilled.

A:  In Priest/ess 2, you described your blood as ritualistic. As adornment. As worn. You wrote, “…my blood does not indicate my gender but my animality, blood remaining that which heals various dysphorias (like virginity being taken) rather than causing dysphorias.” Can you explain what you mean by this? In what ways are you animal?

j/j:  I am an animal like an animal sweats—like sex has a particular smell to it depending on the way one’s lovers and their hormones mix. She calls the way mine smell, “salted caramel.”

I am an animal like it keeps walking even with a broken or missing leg. I am an animal in the way the consciousness meets with the physical/material dimension to refine/revise/play out pre-incarnate commitments and by that adds consciousness to planet. There is more to put in than to take out. We need not deplete our phenomenon of a planet (Earth) just because we are depleted. There is life-force to be found. Howl at the moon—not a cliché but an animal ritual in which very real moonlight shines back down and into the outstretched mouth.

I am the kind of animal that knows what I need by living closely with Earth rhythms. Fuck when it is time to fuck. Breathe deeply in the afternoon sun as the nap happens—let the body be what it came here to be. Drink water (resource) freely from resource. Draw both intentional and unintentional shapes (both beautiful) as the path. The path followed was always also the path created.

A:  I love what you wrote about the pronouns in your body. You wrote, “I constantly do psychic surgery on myself: trim this here, add that here.” Can you speak about the process of this “surgery” and how it has become part of the ceremony of your evolving self?

j/j:  It is nip and tuck by my own hand. I go to myself for revision. To what future versions of me do I want to be aligned? What is required of me orientationally in time and space to manifest the highest frequency vision I can see for myself? Who am I?–replaced by I am. I am is not a state in time and space. It is a vibration, self as vista or environment. In this I have every right to dead-head the roses that are depleting essence, weakening the functionality of my stem.

How is it a ceremony? I am intent with it. Intelligent design with an end-result in mind—result of which is vitality increasing—versus aesthetic. Ultimately I want my aesthetic to be inspired by what is going on inside me. Gender musks in the gender folds.

A:  Something I ask my students each semester is to draw a STOP sign in their notebooks (the shape) and then fill it with all the words that STOP them from completing their goals, their desires, their dreams. What holds them back. I explain that writing it down offers a release. A way out of it. To move through and past. If I were to ask you to do the same, what might fill your STOP sign (words or images) and can you explain your process of moving forward?

I love what you wrote about indulgence in Priest/ess 3. “…doing so is not simply some pleasurable indulgence. This isn’t eating cake. It’s a mouth-full of putrid water from which it is hard to discern the future from. Within the mouth-full are tadpoles swimming. Are new rules begging? It is challenging to go completely into the scream: rite-like exhausting.” Can you speak on this challenge. The shape and smell of this “scream”? What is gained from this indulgent ritual?

j/j:  (I want to start by saying I don’t regularly spend time doing releases that affirm what is holding me back—because affirming I am being held back is not useful for my manifestational agenda— though I do understand the value of cathartic releases of many types). This process, for me, would be more physical. Through somatic abundance being increased by dance in physical plane—it would be more like no thoughts, no words or ideas—simply fiercely shoving my own chi through the vessel of body (physical world) as a way of amplifying consciousness within it—then holding that kind of blowing-into-the-balloon—until I can feel it is on the edge of what it can currently contain—balloon-skin stretched out completely. Red balloon looking almost orange or even see-through. From that point—my toxins kept in the satchel made buoyant by my intention with breath—I let go. It is a mystery what happens next. Sometimes—the balloon slams to the ground and breaks open—toxins leaking down the niches and into the river to be purified by its curves and pounds. And sometimes—that laden balloon actually floats. Such floating state might be how a poem is made.

  A:  Writing is so solitary, though I (especially while reading your work) imagine your process as a collaboration with Earth. With land, water, soil, the creatures beneath feet. Can you lead us on a walk? What you see/hear/smell and how that fuels your creative process?

j/j:  Gesture is collaboration, yes. Not in a void—but very much on planet—in the ardent and marvelous realm of forms—means at any moment I am doing anything—my field is touching another’s and that touch—in and of itself—means there is no aloneness.

It is not one. It is more than one.

Come with me on a walk in my favorite of places or a walk in a place that is not in alignment with my preference fields. Come with me into me—out here on planet. Come.

All manner of creatures exist in the lights and shadows. All manner of creatures exist in the senses. My memoir was recently described to me as a piece of abstract art she got lost in. A painting of abrupt lines stripped of all lines becomes what? Space, potential. I feel I have touched a lot of animate beings in my life. I feel I am barely beginning to touch to the degree I intend to touch.

Phallic candle, incense smoke, purification maneuvers, fig pith, bruised hands, my mother’s tears falling down the bib of her dress.

Today—it was in the way the sun had everything completely quickened—like tips of grass stalks or pine needles extra poignant. How I laid on a cactus whose fruits were leaking beneath my neck while watching the once-in-a-lifetime eclipse take place. Thinking of orgasm as a soul and bodily state of abundance that can in fact be required of the material dimension.

Purchase Priest/ess Books 1-3 HERE
OR HERE!!!

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Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", gender, j/j hastain, priest/ess, priest/ess triliogy, Spuyten Duyvil

Upcoming Performance: Sunday, September 3rd

I’m very excited to perform three new songs with David Lawton as (part of) our band Hydrogen Junkbox this Sunday, September 3rd at the Brooklyn Wildlife Summertime Festival!!

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Hosted by Brooklyn Wildlife, an exciting afternoon of poetry, acoustic music, performance art and more at the LIVING GALLERY BK located at 1094 Broadway in Brooklyn, NY

Get ready to BBQ; we will have options for the folks that only eat veggies.

Doors at 4 pm – $5

PERFORMING LIVE:

Angry Young Mess 16:30

Jack M. Freedman 16:45

Hydrogen Junkbox 17:00

Elanzo 17:15

Joi Sanchez 17:30

Jordan Singh Vanderbeek 17:45

Brian Sheffield 18:00

Shanna Lim 18:15

Thomas Fucaloro 18:30

Melissa Hunter Gurney 18:45

Nathaniel Kressen 19:00

Mercy Bell 19:15

Craig Kite 19:30

PAN 19:45

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Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Brooklyn poetry events, BrooklynWildlife, David Lawton, Hydrogen Junkbox, Living Gallery BK, music and poetry, ukelele and poetry

Falling in Love with Garamond

“I’ve changed my font time and time again. And now it’s Ariel.”    –Eileen Myles

You used to be newspaper. Linear and predictable. A few verb tense issues but barely any spelling errors.

When you were living near the mountains, you grew fond of a poet with windy hair and red, red lipstick. Her voice was smoky and intellectual. You started carrying around a dictionary to look up the words decorating her sentences. It’s like she spoke a different version of English, one with linen napkins and foie gras. You both shared a love for Bukowski and chai tea. She always had scrapes on her knees and her fingernails were chewed.

When you shared one of your poems with her, she said, “It’d be better in Garamond.”

When she left, you looked up this word because you’d never heard it before and you weren’t sure if it was a color or perhaps a type of sonnet.

Once, she let you kiss her because it was a Tuesday, or because it was raining and you let her use your umbrella or maybe because she like you. But probably because of the rain.

Her lips tasted of Henry Miller and peppermint.

You never told her that you started writing everything in Garamond, which you learned was not a color but a font. A shape of lines and curves. You never told her that you started to forget all about her red, red lips and instead, daydreamed about Garamond, named after a Frenchman. Spent your paychecks on ink for your printer to pronounce Garamond’s figure. You became monogamous with this font, unable to notice beauty outside of its letters and punctuation.

She started to notice. She started to notice that you stopped noticing her. She started to notice that your eyes no longer cared about the various shades of red bled into her lips and instead, just stared down. At your paper. And Garamond.

She had never been jealous of a font before; she wished she had never introduced you two.

You used to be newspaper. Black-and-white monotonous.

Now you are 16th century, Parisian engraved.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Charles Bukowski, Eileen Myles, garamond, language, love, poetry

The Legalization of Love

Easy.

Measure two humans marinated in childhood trauma discourse. Add in a heaping scoop of resistance, fear, curiosity, desire, and a pinch of ready.

Build a bar or cafe or library or meeting place where people can walk through doorways freely. With windows. Several bathrooms. Strong, but not aggressive, lighting. Paper tablecloths.

Stop blinking. Get used to the way eyes begin to scream, begging for a nap. But you can’t because suddenly there is a human who makes you feel color blind. Because everything you look at is suddenly the color of them.

Introduce your fingers to theirs. Let them fumble against each other. Call this holding hands. Call this an opportunity to read the morse code of their calluses.

Swap stories, spit, and recipes.

Fill each other’s mailboxes with letters because you each like to watch your words in flight.

Leave your toothbrush at their house. A week later, carve a poem into their pillow and let it submerge into their knots.

Learn how to kiss for the first time even though you’ve been kissing for decades. Even though some even called you good at it.

Run away. Because that’s what you do. That is how you communicate that you are scared. Because you are feeling something.

Allow yourself to be found.

Kiss some more; learn how many freckles sit on their shoulders. Tell them the weightiest secret you’ve ever kept and feel the mass of your body shift.

Get used to what it feels like to be heard. To be understood. To be loved. Without cracks or disclaimers.

Read a newspaper; learn that even though you’ve been human all this time–just like everyone else–suddenly the law opened up to include you. And this person whose hand you hold, whose mouth you’ve memorized but still learn from, whose brain cells are like fireworks you are in awe of, this person, your person, is the one you stand beside each day. And even with the government involved, you still tempt each other’s wild. But now you call them spouse. And you still call them friend. Partner. Pen Pal. Love.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", anniversary, legalization of gay marriage, marriage, meant to wake up feeling, pen pal, queer love

Migration

Against hip, an odometer.

My bones go twenty-two miles above speed limit but no one is watching.

My blood is without signal, so the only music I hear is static and a hum of talk radio.

The check-engine light blinks against my knees and I wonder what would happen if I never turned left or right but just remained forward. Would I fall? What corporate chained coffee shop might I crash into?

It is too easy to write that I am in search of the wild I buried in Nebraska and Colorado.

It is far too complex to mention that I’ve contemplated jumping off a diving board made from rainfall and seaweed.

I threw a party for my feet somewhere between Chicago and South Dakota but they never showed up.

I collected fourteen speeding tickets while living in New York City and I never even owned a car.

When we look up and the moon is being chased by its shadow and everyone from above and below has traveled days just to see it and the one who lives beside me kisses me back into calmness while the earth grows dark like underneath soil and the water still waves even from far away and everything seems possible again.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", meant to wake up feeling, migration, road trip, travel

Thank you DUSIE for publishing my poem

Thank you to Rob Mclennan of DUSIE press for publishing my poem, two strangers underneath a city.

This is a poem about finding love on the subway and the intimate space shared with strangers. I have since turned this poem into a song called Plastic Seats for my poetryband collective Hydrogen Junkbox also featuring David Lawton and Zita Zenda.

Check out the poem HERE
Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", city love, David Lawton, DUSIE, Hydrogen Junkbox, love on the subway, poetry and music, two strangers underneath a city, Zita Zenda

Imposter

first published by great weather for MEDIA

 

You worry you enter rooms just for the free coffee. 

I write this into my notebook and leave it there, unattached to anything else. I try not to think about all the times I have walked into spaces I didn’t belong, or didn’t think I belonged. But this is not a story about coffee. Although, I am drinking some as I write this. No, this is about my life as an imposter.

I am approached by seven doors by the time I get to work. Some open and close without my hands pushing on them; some need to be messed with. I have a key to two of the doors, yet even when I’m inside, I’m not quite sure how or if I should be there.

I am a teacher. Some call me professor. Though that word sounds way too buttoned-up and makes it sound like I brush my hair or wear deodorant (I often forget).

Three days a week (sometimes four), I head into the Bronx and teach at a community college. Throughout the hour and fifteen minutes commute there, I read. Write in my notebook if there are enough words collected inside of me. Sleep. Stare at people staring at their phones. Marvel at the ways in which our lives can twist and turn us into so many different variations of being.

Every other week, I receive my paycheck and still grow astonished that I am getting paid to swell minds.

Growing up, I always thought teachers were aliens. Like flesh-covered dictionaries and encyclopedias. I firmly thought libraries of every book and fact lived inside their bodies, pressed up against their organs, which of course they knew all the names of. Ask a teacher anything and they knew the answer; this is what I believed.

My parents never put my report cards on the refrigerator like my sister. She was in the extra-advanced classes; I was in the low self-esteem club (yes, there was such a thing).

I wanted to be a veterinarian until I figured out I’d have to deal with blood and death. I thought about being a hairstylist, and then changed my mind to a pastry chef until I became a drug addict and that took me away for a bit.

I have been a nanny, a house cleaner, a barista, a bookseller. I’ve worked in a movie theatre, a diner, a dollar store, a fast food chain, a bagel shop. I’ve sold jewelry; I’ve sold my body.

Ten years ago, I never thought I would call myself teacher. What am I saying? Five years ago, I wasn’t sure I could call myself this. For most of my life, I never quite knew how to be. How to sit straight, how to socialize, how to be a girl, how to study, how to be bad, how to be good, how to remain.

I tell my students that doors represent an opening. An engagement with another side, land, perspective. I tell them that our bodies contain doors of varying sizes. Doors with padlocks; doors with police taped ribboned around; doors with broken locks. Doors with windows, screens, metal, wooden, translucent.

Even an imposter has a door to their insides. The problem is that sometimes they just don’t always know the way in or through.

I carried around an EXIT sign sewed into both my wrists from all the times I tried to walk out and jump off the ledge of this body. Yet I always found a way to get up and keep walking. But this is not a story about my mental illness and all the scars creating an alphabet on my skin.

I am an imposter. But maybe we all are? I mean, what qualifies any of us to be in any room? I want my students to remain and get their degrees, but that paper doesn’t necessarily get them into a room. Because then there are other STOP signs, which might assault their path like gender, race, class, religion, sexual orientation, must I keep going?

When I walk into the classroom, the students have no idea how nervous I am. Are they really going to listen to me? Me? But I almost flunked high school. I was a restless mess in college. And when I pass by the other teachers, I wait for them to ask me about my credentials. How many books I’ve read and if I’ve gotten through the literary cannon (definitely not).

In New York, where I teach, suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for those ranging in ages of 15-34. Every semester, my students tell me about their depression. Their anxieties. Their losses and their fears. I do not tell them all the times and ways I tried to walk off the ledge of this body. How I still feel this urge…

I do not tell them because what I show them is far more important: I always come back. At the start of every class, I welcome them as writers (because they all are) and remind them to be as present as they can be. At the end of the semester, I tell them I will always be their teacher, even when we are no longer walking through the same door.

And yet, I still cling to this word of imposter. I’m not trying to deceive anyone, as the definition often suggests. It’s more about how I feel.

I scratch hate crimes into the death of my skin, dry from winter fornicating with its oils.

I find this in my notebook, dated a few months ago. I have a steady job and a magical spouse who I love and a dog and an apartment and things and nourishment, but this does not mean that I don’t fall sometimes. Mess up. Relapse into old behaviors. Hence, my self-stuck imposter label.

I worry that I am an imposter in my marriage because I don’t believe in this word. I’ve had no great examples around me, and even though it’s a word my people have fought to have access to (and won), I still feel unclear by it

I am an imposter hippie. Swallowed by panic attacks at marches and rallies. Hairy but hungry for all varieties of animal. Can I still be a non-conforming subculture beatnik, and live inside this queer-stained heteronormative lifestyle?

Recently in my Women’s Literature class, my students and I watched Lidia Yuknavitch’s TED talk titled, “The Beauty of Being a Misfit.” Though I have watched this many times, I still feel emotional throughout. She said, “Even at the moment of your failure, right then, you are beautiful. You don’t even know it yet, but you have the ability to reinvent yourself endlessly.” Afterwards, I asked the students to react and one announced that she felt like her soul had been touched. So often we don’t quite have the words to say how we feel or even what we are. And then someone else articulates it as though they have been swimming inside our lives, our brains. A student asked, “But what is a misfit?” And I let the other students answer: outsider, someone unlike the others, someone who doesn’t fit in.

Maybe being an imposter is like being a misfit. It’s this giant secret I have living inside me. Like seeds of my former lives growing in my gut, pushing it out. It feels like the reason I should not be welcomed, but maybe being an imposter is the reason I should be here.

I have an exercise I do with my students each semester. It is based upon all the times we are approached by boxes: a box to check off our gender, our race, socio-economic class, educational background, religion, etc. Before the students arrive, I tape up blank pieces of white paper all over the classroom. Then, I ask them to stand up and approach a piece of paper.

This is your box, I say. Think about all the times you are asked to check boxes that may not include what you are or how you see yourself. Boxes with someone else’s language and expectations. Boxes which aim to label you with words or categories you may not feel connected to. Boxes just not big enough to include your vocabulary. I tell them that these pieces of paper are their boxes. They get to fill it in with their words. In the past, students have written: mother, battered, divorced, misunderstood, smart, latina, multi-racial, brother, son, survivor, queer, human, pansexual, Muslim, and even a question mark.

I ask them to sit down when they are done and write in their notebooks about what it felt like to choose their lexicon. Then, we get back up and walk around the room, taking in each other’s language. We notice the repeated words, what we have in common, and what words surprised us. For some, this is their first opportunity to give away their self-identified language.

I absolutely hate labels, even though I wear this imposter one across my bound chest. And I wear other labels too, which I self-imposed. Do I do this before someone else does?

Dictionaries are thicker now, and so are we. In brain stem, worry lines, and flesh stretch.

Maybe we need new definitions? To take these words out of their tightly-sealed casings and wrap new syllables around them. Make room for more meanings. Expand the width of our doorways.

Filed under: WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", depression, gender, great weather for media, identity, Lidia Yuknavitch, meant to wake up feeling, mental illness, teacher

NYC Governor’s Island Poetry Festival!!

Celebrate Poetry, Sun, and Imaginations gone WILD at the annual NYC Governor’s Island Poetry Festival.

I will be there with great weather for MEDIA and hosting Queer Art Organics on Saturday July 29th, featuring Trae Durica, Sarah Sala, and Aldrin Valdez at 2pm on the Algonquin Stage.

 

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Filed under: SHOWS | video, WRITING | rambles Tagged: "aimee herman", Aldrin Valdez, great weather for media, meant to wake up feeling, NYC Governor's Island Poetry Festival, NYC poetry festival, Sarah Sala, Trae Durica