Evolution is Self Portrait, a guest post by Kate Glasheen

The problem with loving something dearly is that it forever creates a tether to which you are intrinsically linked. The future becomes not what could be, but what is allowed to be only in relation to that. An anchor point: the mallet of affections smashing the stake of its imprint directly into the heart. 

Attached to that stake is a chain.

Change renders the facades of what’s loved into something else. Different though not new, but since old now alien instead. The uncanny valley feelings that flow from this lubricate the head of the axe that hacks away in chunks what’s dear, what keeps you upright, chuk.chuk.chucking into the meat of a tree whose branches kept you out of the rain for the part of your life that mattered most.

This is how I feel about Troy.

Try to look in a mirror; what is it you see? It’s not who, because your reflection isn’t you. It’s not alive because its only light on a surface caged in existence by edges. It’s not real because it’s video, footage of something real.  It’s not identical, because it’s opposite of, command-shift-h for a horizontal flip. 

In the ways of matter, reflections are rejection. They are a throwing back, a refusal to absorb. Glassy surfaces project what’s handed to them in the same way their molecular inability to accept hands it right back.

Additionally, your pupil is a pivot point, your ocular membrane a boundary well past the physical. It’s a door where you exit and the world enters. It’s liminal; your cones and rods do the work of inverting information just as it inverts the moment that what you see becomes how you’re seen. The infinite space of your eyes on the mirror, flipped once again, bouncing back and forth like dueling computer monitors, each iteration buzzing a half step behind the last. 

This is how I feel about myself.

The uncanny valley feelings of moving through the world tethered to the place you love and the person you were when you were there while you are somewhere else and someone else.

The half worlds between self and reflected self are where we all live in degrees. My version rests very much in the middle. Between familiar and strange. Between home and away, townie and visitor.  Between girl and boy. Never fully committing to either end of any spectrum because of the terror that if I let go of the other it will be gone forever and with it those worlds most dear built on its back.

But living everywhere means living nowhere and the body is god in matters of home. 

Injury is reflection in that it changes what we see and how we’re seen. Your original path bouncing off the offense in the ultraviolet of a trajectory now changed. Reflections are like gravity. They can only be measured by including time in the quantities because a reflection only reacts, it can never invent. Injury, too, is all tenses in its before, during, after. They can be a lifetime, multiple lifetimes, injuries can be forever.

These things are all true, but only if you allow them to be true. I have allowed this so far.

So I must begin to disallow but starting is an act of faith. To trust that the mandate of letting go nestled within what I need is only releasing the pieces that hold me back. To analyze my tethers so the surgical precision to follow can sever them without severing connectivity. Delicate slices, margin thin, looseleaf edges zip.zip.zipping across skin in the scalpel’s glide along the premeditated marks of a surgeon. 

To know that true connection only grows when shackles are removed. To also have faith in those most loved, those who I am connected to, that they are good in the ways I’ve known them to be.

To trust that my reflection will become more true, not less.

Meet the author

Kate Glasheen was born and raised in Troy, New York and lived there until their departure for Pratt Institute for a BFA in Fine Art. Kate has since been a creator, artist, and contributor for several critically acclaimed books, participated in exhibitions and collections across the globe, and worked on several of the biggest properties in entertainment. Their artistic interests find communion in fine and sequential art under the notion that there’s something hilarious about something that’s not funny at all.

Social Media Links:

Instagram: @katiecrimespree  @katie_glash_tattoo

Twitter: @katiecrimespree

Fine Art: https://www.paradigmarts.org/collections/kate-glasheen

About Constellations

A debut graphic novel about a queer teen living in the margins who is determined to find their way ahead.

Are you supposed to be a boy or a girl?

It’s a question that follows Claire everywhere. Inescapable on the street, in school, and even at home. A black hole forever trying to pull them in. But as long as they have ride-or-die best friend Greg at their side and a drink in their hand, everything will be okay. Right?

Except, Claire can never have just one drink. And when harassment at school reaches a fever pitch, Claire begins a spiral that ends in court-ordered rehab. Feeling completely lost, Claire is soon surrounded by a group of new friends and, with the help of a patient counselor, finds a space to unpack all the bad they’ve experienced. But as Claire’s release gets closer so does the question: Can Claire stay sober and true in a world seemingly never made for them?

Set in 1980s Troy, New York, Constellations is a portrait of a queer teen living in the margins but determined to find their way ahead. Done in watercolor and ink, debut author-artist Kate Glasheen has created a world where strong lines meet soft color, and raw emotions meet deep thought in this story of hope, humor, and survival.

ISBN-13: 9780823450718
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 05/23/2023
Age Range: 14 – 17 Years

Filed under: Guest Post