i got seven tattoos this year. a lucky number, and a way to understand what i committed to in 2017.

i cast liberation spells down my arms – “all that you touch you change, all that you change changes you, the only lasting truth is change, god is change”, and “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion”.

butler and camus. i am in a lineage of writer warriors.

i got a black band around my left arm, my heart arm, for my commitment to black liberation.

i got four creatures on my body, emergent strategy teachers.

unapologetically big, gentle, familial, communal, fiercely defensive creatures on my arms: my cow, my elephant.

under my right ear, my octopus, an alien-on-earth teaching me to hold a lot easily with many arms and be flexible for the sake of freedom.

under my left ear, a turtle telling me slower, slower, even slower.

grateful to Vanessa Reynolds for these body transformations. already scheming on 2018 ink and commitments.