Friday, May 31: @ Lesbian Herstory Archives

Oh, the irony.

The irony of spending the last day of a short, ephemeral five days in a house archiving all facets of lesbian herstory: the good, the bad, the ugly, the unknown, the common. 

Spending that first half trying to think about our projects in a space that has done all it can to preserve so much of this particular part of lesbian herstory was a surreal feeling. The house was a home to information that could not be found elsewhere. How fascinating to spend time eating pizza and drinking wine in living history. 

We were able to get a tour of the archives as well as invite someone, so I naturally picked my lesbian partner. Together, we were able to experience the archives and see a facet of our queer identity together. I remember joking that I would submit all my writings someday to the LHA, but it’s nice to know that maybe that won’t really be a joke. That someday I could very well exist there, too. The way Shawn had given the tour and explained the origins of the Archives as starting from someone’s house, someone’s bedroom, was less a lecture and more a story being told. That the stories around us are closer than we think. It was reassuring to hear. 

Everyone’s ideas about their projects for Manifold sounded so interesting and I hope that they follow through with the more ambitious ideas they have for it, so that I can see how they pull it off in the end. The remarkability of eight queer people of color teeming with ideas of support and contemplation and consideration for each other and each other’s ideas is something that I wish for others to experience for themselves in any way that manifests itself.

I wish for this program to come together again for a different cohort to experience a way to grab hold of something just for themselves. 

Maybe someday this project will be submitted under my name to the LHA as a remembrance of this time together. Wouldn’t that be nice? I think it would be.