afterAdrienneMareeBrown, Ren L[i]u

asIlaydying**(oralternatively,anode tocatfur)afteradriennemareebrown byRenL[i]u

original journal entry

What does it mean to carry my ancestors with me everywhere I go? To recognize that I am the creation of hundreds of thousands and eons of ancestors?

What does it mean/look like to deconstruct our linear view of time? So that the past is ongoing and the future is already ever-present?

How does that allow me to expand my definition of who my ancestors are? those younger than me, my peers, all integral parts of my lineage

How can I live in relationship to the earth, in reciprocity, that she is also within that web of ancestors?

How can I, in recognizing that my communities are my ancestors—and I their descendant—also understand myself to have descendants?

What would it look like to move through life in viewing myself as an ancestor? i often think of myself one year from today as my ancestor (i.e. flip the rude “one year ago, today” snapchat reminders

Myself one year from now as an ancestor who knows far more than I do, and I as their descendant

And doesn’t that deconstruct this linearity of time we have grown so deeply accustomed to

One in which ancestors exist in the future and descendants also exist in the past

What does it mean for my care to determine my ancestry rather than my ancestry to determine my care?

this is a poem about the ancestry that has informed the ways that I care that in turn has given me ancestors everywhere, and a roadmap for finding them —to understand that care and ancestry are intertwined As I lay dying Make sure to unravel the lint roller and return all of the cat fur back to my black clothing it is where it belongs stubborn and unmovable thousands of persistent reminders of the warmth of a small and powerful heart laying next to mine beating harder than a drumline but only if you are allowed close enough to hear it so that even in the cold months when my physical state has finally caught up to each musing of “I’m deceased” or “mentally, I’m Six Feet Underground” i will have these tiny reminders buried with me these tiny reminders coaxed into my being by the hand that has Brought my Existence nearly all of its warmth my grandmother strokes cats with the same gentle, divine hands she has used to hold me and how could each strand of

shedded fur be a nuisance when it is the most tangible gift and reminder and o of my f cours 姥 e, 姥’s magic how could I hold onto my grandmother without also bringing with me my grandmother’s grandmother and her grandmother and all of the grandmothers who have existed before her their lineages intertwined like kindergarteners’ fingers wrapped around a rope their little big hands linked together to form those strings of twine that connect us this rope i shall carry with me its invisible twine passing through my grandma’s fingers coaxed onto my body as strands of fur yes, these are forever reminders of how I, too, have held my darlings close and unwavering clinging to the thoughts of them

For

days,

years,

even centuries

after first impressions letting the images of loved ones seep and embed into my being getting stuck into even the darkest

corners of my closets And maybe that is why cat fur sticks most to black clothing so that even in the most intense shadows and shades those who have formed me cling on unwaveringly and “you’re stuck with me” is no longer just metaphor It is only cat fur that has managed to get everywhere all dimensions of my being filling every nook and cranny especially the ones

I have spent so long keeping hidden my ancestry shows up illuminating wisdom and meaning in even the most marginal of spaces dandelions from cracks of concrete blossoming and radiating out I carry this cat fur my grandma and all of the grandmas before her all my ancestry with me into into the lives I live and the loves that continue mine and my darling, how I would be so honored if a seedling of my being somehow nestled itself into the folds of your brain for even just a millisecond