Two lesbian imagined  moments of Brooklyn. The first from the wonderful reposing of the 50s-60s lesbian paperback covers calendar created by a contemporary Brooklyn cast, clear evidence that in the 2000s, lesbians do camp. The second, my own moment of longing crossing the Brooklyn bridge on one of my visits to New York. A visit to one's home is a strange mix of words. The day is gray here, and my desk is strewn with articles, hundreds of them, waiting for their place in the quilt of dispossession I am assembling. As I read again through each day's call to awareness, I grow heavy with sadness, anger, wondering how it all came about, so much suffering unstopped. I think I do not want to see another peace of paper marked with my ragged words, "Palestine-Israel" and then I think about waking up every morning with the gray wall my only vista, my only horizon, every morning of occupation that goes on and on. The papers are ghosts of hope, that somehow the outside will climb the wall and see people on the other side, people, people. I look at my Brooklyn Bridge and the beautiful young woman parodying, with a warm heart, my old desire, for some reason I needed these moments today. It is the possibilty of our imaginings of love and desire, of journies over shores, of peoples connected by walkways of the heart that nationalisms most fear.

Frances Taylor and JN at Pride March, Central Park, NYC, 1981, photo by Paula Grant

And then this wonderful image so kindly sent to me by Paula of an old friend, of Paula's good friend, Frances, poet, thinker, an early confident of my butch-fem thinking, taken at a public time of announcing other possibilities. All of this connected on this day, what I wanted to offer, to give you and myself. Our bodies of hope.