This year, on Halloween, I am going to be completing another full orbit around the sun. And as I sit in an Amtrak crossing the Pennsylvania Horseshoe Curve, dear reader, I find myself quietly introspective. I am a young woman, travelling alone, chasing yet another sunrise. It is humbling. It is exhilarating. Over the years I have stopped noticing my birthdays but I am quietly noticing it on this turn. This year, particularly, has been a year of losses and grief but also, of freedoms and joys I am overwhelmed by. I am thankful.
I love Halloween. Who doesn’t? Gorging on brightly wrapped candies aside (if you know me you know I have a huge sweet tooth and a particular love for bitterly dark chocolate), it has a trickster, witchy, energy that pulls me. A day of changing seasons, a day when the wall separating the realms between spirits and humans is the most yielding. Perhaps it is this same mischievous quality that draws me to sex work, to bodies, to kink. The witch’s new year day, it is a day of storytelling, and perhaps that is what keeps me the most tethered. I am, after all, a woman born to generations of storytelling woman who chased sunrises, and one day, one day, I’ll be eloquent enough to describe all these connections and tell eloquent sagas to a rapt audience. But until then, I’ll still be chasing adventures, fascinated by the morbid (but not gore, never gore) and embracing Life to her fullest while remaining humble to Death’s presence.
It is an intimate dance and I am still choreographing.
Amongst all my joys, this year of my life brought me Lena (and perhaps some of you saw the artistic evidence; be warned, it is an NSFW video on an X-rated site) . I am still holding my breath, stunned that such intimacy could waltz so easily into my life. It is a new reckoning with myself and all the knowledges I have collected. And so this Joy comes, urging me to make space, to make intention. To retwine more graciousness with firmer boundaries. But She reminds me, in the same breath: to show up in my creative pursuits, in my work, in my partnerships. To show up sensually. To show up uproariously. To show up! And to show up with a wink and a flair.
Feeling generous? For my birthday, please consider a donation to one of the following organizations: Project SAFE Philadelphia, SWOP Behind Bars, or SAKHI: For South Asian Women.
Feeling cheesy? I wouldn't mind getting a book of my ever growing booklist!
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