The Rise of Intersectional Gaia

She came up big and she came up androgynous, wearing every kind of ceremonial mask anyone on her terrain had every imagined. She came up and out in a state of flashing faces from owls and hawks, to charred anteaters and scorched bunny rabbits. Gaia came out showing all her regalia as the last pair of lungs she had burned at the hands of her children pushed to the brink by the myths they got wrong. She screamed out in the form of flocks and the thudding sounds of the bodies falling from the sky. Her tongue made words in every language written in the past or present, her scream had undertones of stars exploding. She came up big and she came up on fire and still in her thrashing, her death beyond death throes, every move was elegant, mesmerizing like a dancing kaleidoscope.

So imagine you were going to write a science fiction novel and right at this one point in the story the spirit of all life on your planet had to be embodied by this one “great mother.” Imagine all the things you might have seen before that day, and how, as a creative artist, you would combine those real world elements into your fantasy of death, and potentially global rebirth.

Imagine you’re writing this thing right at the exact time that technology has gotten so wild and fast, that in reality there are scientists taking some monkeys, who were bothering nobody, and decided to pump them full of human DNA. Imagine this was at the same time that governments were giving out scores on your social credit. It was the same time when people fighting for their basic human rights could be arrested for flashing a yellow umbrella, or flashing a hand signal they found in a Hollywood movie. Imagine that all of these things and more were going on, but the only thing you had to focus on as the author was this rising energy, peaking in and out of the plumes of smoke in this sacred spot.

Imagine that as you were becoming aware of all these things, that all your other characters were powerless against this unnerving event. Imagine that it was like seeing the face of god, but in one of those forms that had been so long forgotten that it seemed like an alien. Imagine everyone with a couple of dollars clutching their pearls, both real and synthetic. Imagine the global clergy snapping down to all the pages in their books, looking for rules why this was not possible. Imagine you had to write something better than a sequel where everyone fixed this crazy experience with war and missiles. Imagine this spirit of the fire rising up and taunting you into seduction, asking you to burn along with it. Imagine you’re that author trying to be that character, on this burning planet you made with all your friends, and most of your ancestors.

So you look for something that sits in between the pages. You look for the inspiration that old Einstein said, comes in at the margins. You look to remix the possibilities. You get into the bi, tri, transiting, the new, the hybrid beings. You get into the bodies that have been leading the way back to a common ancestry, back to a common story that this flaming, dancing god-thing can relate to. You splice and you dice, you even julienne all the good things, all the kind soft nothings you think they might want to hear so when the ash settles a new world can be reborn.

So imagine that world is real and there are no links here, you just have to do your own research and own your own piece. And you have to listen to others and be kind to them, too. Imagine you have to get back to the tones that make the golden rule possible. Imagine you have to go back to hearing with your eyes and feeling with your heart and better than that, imagine you have to feel your grief, let it morph into anger, and then let it fall like rain all around and on top of you because you are the author and you made this; there is no one else to blame. Sure you’re going to say there are plenty to blame, but you’re the author and to come into your power, you have to register that and then let it go. Blame becomes challenge to your creativity. Hurt becomes the scar that reminds you of how strong you are. Comfort becomes something you are grateful for, and suddenly you realize that it’s the sound and the color that will save this moment.

If one color were better than another this planet would be monochrome. If one sound were better than another all voices would be monotone. If one way of loving were all that there was, this planet would have one species, one sex, one position on everything and one face to its god. If one way of seeing were all that was needed your people would have one eye in the middle of their faces, since stereo vision would be superfluous. The air would never change smell, not even after the rain.

The planet we imagine when we imagine a supreme kind of way is an aberration, you would realize as you sat down to author. Your perfect world of perfect order would be nothing like the one you just set on fire, would be nothing like the one you lament. Your perfect world of continuity wouldn’t even be turtles all the way down. For the next world to emerge, you realize, nothing can stop becoming more complex, not for any fraction of a second. Unity you would realize is real, while sameness was only real in the soft banging seconds the ones that took place (or not) before all of this — everything.

So imagine if evolution was harder than you thought, but you were dedicated to giving up your notion of conformity to be a great author. Then imagine if you realized that to do this story its justice, you had to let others in on the story before it was done. Imagine you realized you had to let others write the next story of the world with you as.

Just imagine. And then you’ll understand what the heretics, the peaceniks, the caring outcasts and alternative creatures, the multi-breeds, bi-cultural and mutli-culti babies having been saying to you — from inside you — all this time. You would realize dear author that difference is all there ever was and wealth was in those things you sought to control.

Dear Authors, you would finally let go, and get lost in the flow of all the things you don’t even know. Because this place is too big to write all alone you would delight in witnessing all the authorship. You would find yourself giddy with friends, find yourselves challenged together just as you had been alone, and your loneliness, your isolation would no longer guide you. Your heroes would come from close in. the real world now, instead of your distant mind.

Dear Author, Your writing together would still get messy, your rattling fires would get more wild. Your seas would grow and spray into places you weren’t prepared to get wet, and still amidst all this, you would find an order, a love, a way to be; because dear author, you got this far and you don’t give up now. You are one face to this fire and you are tired of burning up so hard you can’t breathe. And if one of you can’t breathe in this story, then none of you can.