My Chiron Is In Leo
Claiming My Zone of Desire As the Stage
Abolition is presence, which means abolition is life in rehearsal. Not a recitation of rules, much less relentless lament. Although the surface of contradictions, the dynamics of those contradictions in their dominant meeting, propose carceral displacement or spatial fix as necessary, natural and inevitable. So in order for the contradiction to ripen, we know the stage itself must tell a story.
— Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Keynote
My Chiron is in Leo. The question that animated most of my 20s was: Will I allow myself to shine when no one is watching or can I only show up for my work with the lights on…forever pulled forward by a gaze that I prioritize over my own satisfaction? If your Chiron is in Leo please tell me how you think about the audience. I understand a fundamental aspect of my practice, and black radical creativity more broadly, is call and response. I understand that this is a performance and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us “abolition is presence, which means abolition is life in rehearsal”. The fundamental belief that I teach inside Seeda School is we don’t have to wait for a future we can bear, we can pull the worlds we desire into the present through rehearsing inside them now. But at what point are we showing up for the rehearsal solely for the desire of applause?
What is the difference between performing our values and actually embodying them? Is there a difference at all? For most of my life I made a home in what I call the “Zone of Validation”, a site that taught me presence, love, safety, belonging, ease and care all had to be hard earned. A site that had me dependent on proof of graduation, evidence of colonial cooperation spelled out in serif font, continually stacking my CV and ledgers of labor for stamps of approval from institutions and corporations while playing mind reader to lovers in order to cosplay as whoever I imagined their ideal partner might be. The “Zone of Validation” trains you to become proficient at performing, a master of a ceremony that only serves whoever and whatever you’re seeking validation from.
To truly tell this story I must trace this learned choreography back to my childhood. Before I was a conjure woman1, I was just a girl…afraid of everything. Breathing, blinking, laughing, loving, eating, sleeping, weeping, peeping, asking, especially, asking. Every cell in my body began to assume the safest place on earth was performing scripts that prioritized the needs of others over my own. Inside this dance I shrank and shrank and shrank inside myself, collapsing into a black hole of longing. My silhouette became an abyss. A shadow created in the absence of light. A form without depth. Thin, thin, thin, must stay thin. Must slice myself across the air of rooms without shifting one molecule in the atmosphere. Small, small, small, like the space itself. The oxygen in the “Zone of Validation” was hard to come by so I learned how to perform with suspended breath.
The one thing I could never quite figure out how to suspend was the asking. My insistent questions always seemed to get me into trouble. Still, that seemed to be the only thing I couldn’t extinguish from my act. Why did they? Why do you have to? What’s that smell? Can I have some water? Can I stay at your house? Can you help me reach that? Can you please pick up my medicine? Can you please pick me up? Can you give me a throat without question marks?
Punishment seemed to present itself on the other side of the incessant questions, but the asking and the interdependent persistence seemed as though it was a fact of life beyond the “Zone of Validation”. No matter how quiet I tried to be, how still I tried to stay, how docile I dreamed of becoming, the obedience I craved embodying — I failed because the wild, ungovernable longing for you persisted. The eroticism of the questions penetrated the “Zone of Validation” and thrusted me into the “Zone of Desire” where my throat full of question marks found home and my queer body that still holds the memory of all the slashes found belonging.
I’m certain the experience of corporal punishment in childhood turned me into an abolitionist artist in adulthood. Where she/her/they/them let’s their throat roar with the questions2:
How will we insist on defunding the police?
How will we insist on demilitarizing our communities?
How will we insist on removing police from schools?
How will we insist on freeing people from prisons and jails?
How will we insist on repealing laws that criminalize survival?
How will we insist on investing in community self-governance?
How will we insist on providing safe housing for everyone?
How will we insist on investing in care, not cops?
Today I am grateful my longing insisted inside every landscape informed by colonial choreographies, peaks of violence and valleys where validation seemed to be the only food. The hunger brought me home. Where practicing inside the questions, rehearsing our desire and dancing our values full out invokes a new type of performance. Where our expanded capacity to experience feelings beyond fear is the only applause we seek. Where our inhale and extended exhale is the only validation we ever needed. Where space is infinite and there is no such thing as me or you taking up too much of it.
The punctuating hook of my questions, my insistence on otherwise, pulled me into my Zone of Desire where my self worth is no longer entangled with the adoration of others, because under the warmth of these Leo lights is the permission to adore myself.
What if I told you, you are the star of this play and the greatest show on earth is us carving the landscape of the abolitionist horizon with our longing?
How would you act?
🌱 Seeda School News
🎙️ In case you missed it, last week on the podcast For the Worldbuilders we released episode 64: “Becoming Your First Client: The Grief Work of Composting Past Selves and Desires”. Tune in and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube if you haven’t already. Read more about the episode in the post below. 👇🏾
deon, alecia. "Between the Worlds of the Colonizer and the Conjure Woman." QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, vol. 6 no. 3, 2019, p. 143-148. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/748076.
These 8 questions are informed by the 8 to Abolition campaign created in 2020 and co-authored by Mon Mohapatra, Leila Raven, Nnennaya Amuchie, Reina Sultan, K Agbebiyi, Sarah T. Hamid, Micah Herskind, Derecka Purnell, Eli Dru, and Rachel Kuo.