time is a stack of plates (or something)

Years ago, a friend of mine (more than a friend, sometimes a friend, maybe not a friend) was trying to describe a theory about time as being non-linear. They gestured with their hands, one above, one below, and said “it’s like if time was a stack of plates, all at once”.

I didn’t understand it, but because I so badly wanted to impress this person, I agreed enthusiastically. “It’s like Abraham Lincoln is being murdered right NOW!” they said. “Wow” I said.

I still don’t understand it, not in the terms this sometimes-friend hoped I would. But more and more lately I keep seeing old versions of myself around corners and in puddles. I see him in graveyards too. Is that like how Abraham Lincoln is being murdered right now? Maybe. All I know is that there is a plate somewhere in the stack that I would really like to see, and to give care to.

I’m making another movie featuring my animated alter ego, Frog-With-Human-Ears. In this second installment of the series, he is chasing after another Frog With Human Ears, an older one: one who doesn’t speak or emote, but whistles, slaps water, and walks slowly. The Old Frog is wise, but far away— too far to talk to. The New Frog is fast, but not fast enough to understand the Old Frog.

As part of the film, I set the scene of a long hallway featuring many picture frames. This environment is a tiny painted diorama which my animated Frogs will traverse. Inside the small painted frames, I am setting teeny tiny pictures of myself as a child: Human Me. Human With Human Ears. I’ve placed each teeny photo into a 4x6 photoshop file, which I will print from Walgreens Print Shop tomorrow morning, and cut out each picture to place in each tiny frame.

In looking at these teeny tiny pictures, I have the feeling that time is a stack of plates, but not the understanding. These teeny lads in these teeny pictures are not behind me, but beneath or above me. I think the issue here is that I keep looking over my shoulder. I need to feel the bottoms of my feet and the top of my hairs. I’m still not sure I understand the stack of plates— not well enough to access them. But it must mean something that I can SEE the teeny lads in the teeny pictures. I can really see them.

on the tools of powerful men

11.16.24

For the last week and a half, my speed has been FAST. There is a future I can see dimly which frightens me: one where sweeping declaratives made by people with man-given power ruin, wreck, and raze.

In peering thru this dim peephole, I and many others have increased our speed and urgency to begin patching holes and reinforcing corners. Our clever eyes are seeing the ways these powerful men might try to egg our houses, and we’re taking actions to protect ourselves.

The patches and goops and glues we have available are, unfortunately, the tools of these powerful men: legal name change, legal marriage status, matching and consistent legal documentation, gender markers. I and many others have rushed this week to paint it all over with a smooth beige, so that when the men come to egg our houses, they might pass us by because if our houses are smooth and if our houses are beige we mightn’t flag any of their ire.

In my body and my presentation, my house will never really be smooth or beige: my ass is fat, my nose is button, my hands are small. Clocky boy summer. Clocky boy eternal. In my body and presentation, there isn’t any patching or reinforcing left to do. But I have two bodies: one that exists for me and my loves, and one that exists in the tools of the powerful men.

There’s a discomfort I hear from my peers about using the patches and goops and glues that the powerful men give us: that it feels like bowing to them, or giving them something. I am of the mind that it erases us from them. The powerful men use cold tools like databases and papers to make decisions. If a disguise prevents them from harming me, the disguise becomes holy. If the body I have, which lives in their cold database, says “M” “M” “M” “M” all the way down, then maybe they will pass by my door. And the body I have, which lives in their database, will be holy too, and I will honor him.