I’m actually good at selling things. But defying gentrification is really a movement.

Thoughts and reflections as I turn 40 this week, and learn how to dwell at peace in space.

In my fifth week of working in mall retail for the first time, I have learned that I am excellent at selling things. Actual things, like soap shaped like balls. And sometimes pink fairies.

But where I’ve been going wrong is selling this platform as a thing instead of sharing this platform as a movement and a flow state.

I have also learned, as I meet 40 years on Sunday, December 14, that I haven’t always had the words for what is happening to me that have value to others, but I do have those kinds of words that have value to me.

And it’s enough for it to have value for me and me alone.

This is how I want to start my transition point between two decades.

I also want to spend most of Sunday in solitude, joy, and creativity, and honestly, the universe has made sure that’s exactly what I need to do.

First, it surprised me by helping me win the art grant on my first try, solidifying that my collecting of yarn and fabric and related notions and books wasn’t a fluke.

Then it was making it so I absolutely had to let go of our DC Wharf apartment.

And then it was making it so the book wouldn’t come out on my time, but its time, due to issues with the distribution platform.

With that being said, I’m officially pushing back the celebration of my book launch to February. Outside of the special edition that many will receive soon, the paperback book launch will be what we celebrate and tour around. I’ll be doing more bookstore outreach and library outreach to ensure that the paperback is on every shelf and that it’s priced in a way that its easy to bounce into your carts, as easy as the bath bombs at work are!

So no book reception in Baltimore on my birthday, but yes to Les and me having a quiet celebration that will be everything I wanted for this day, especially as this year has tried to kill me. Queue up Luciile Clifton’s infamous poem about celebration in the face of death:

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me every everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

— — 

At 40 I am realizing I am a person who believes in flow and organic regeneration. I’m realizing that what I thought was slow living and rural backwardness was just nature building itself up.

Ecosystems are urbanism; they aren’t the things in the way of urbanism. Ecosystems don’t always go fast, but they always move forward.

And yes, when the ecosystem produces enough raw materials, we can create new things out of those and come together as a village to build and create together.

I always thought it was the rural slowness that made people hate my queerness or that made me seen as worthless when my autistic brain and its desire to create art or work on my own projects, didn’t meet the needs of farm cultivation or city industrialism.

But, in a time of fascist and carceral urbanisms, the city can and has been just as oppressive, if not more.

But I know that home calls to me, in a village of flow.

Defying Gentrification to me, means walking towards and building towards that village of flow.

— 

Finally, I’m still working on my goal for this year to consolidate all of my platforms into one, where i lead with my art practice, but I still show up as a policy advocate and movement leader who is insistent that housing is a human right and there should be freedom of movement, and that my ideas around textiles and urbanism can co-exist.

Right now, my KristPattern timeline is my favorite place to be on Meta’s internet and over on Alphabet’s, I have calibrated my main @KristenJeffers YouTube account to feed me everything I want to see and speak on.

Plus, my SEO is locked into my given name and everything I do and my brand labels are secondary.

So yes, the “rebrand” or one should say the rehumanizing continues.

Stay tuned and join me as I share even more of how I feel as a young elder!

Until next time,

Kristen

PS — These are my colors of the year, take that Pantone!