Cleopatria Peterson is a black non-binary trans multidisciplinary artist that writes, printmakes, illustrates and more. They graduated from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Fashion Communication program and are the medal winner for Cross-Disciplinary Arts: Publications at OCAD. Their work focuses on themes of nature, humour, identity, and above all things, love. Their chapbook What We Call Home was shortlisted for the BpNichol chapbook award.

*

I Spy With My Little Eye

By Cleopatria Peterson

Growing up, I was in love with the I Spy book series. There was something so perfect and creepy about all these fantastical images with no people, just objects, creating worlds I wanted to crawl into. As a kid that spent all my time in my head, anything that was an option for escapism became my obsession. My favourite was I Spy Spooky Night, which to anyone who knows me and my love of horror can’t come as a surprise. I think a lot about these books and spending what felt like hours trying to find ‘eight pinecones.’ I think about what I search for now that I’m older, how it feels like the same kind of yearning and observation. If it isn’t obvious yet, I am also an only child. These books were escapism, they were friends. They made me very good at searching. I rarely played I Spy with a friend or in a car ride because there was no one there to do it with, and to be honest, who wanted to find things in the real world? No, I preferred the books. Now that I am older, searching in reality has often become a heartbreaking ordeal. Finding is another story, because sometimes what you’re looking for isn’t actually there, or it’s so hidden you miss it. Where do you even start to look then?

In an old perzine, I once wrote about being an archaeologist trying to uncover a history out of scraps. When I was a child, I dreamed of being an actual archaeologist, discovering dinosaurs, new monsters, anything. One day I decided everything that mattered had already been discovered and gave up on that idea. I was a kid and no one was telling me otherwise.

In our current landscape where everything is only fleeting in the absence of physical media and inaccessible streams, I question what gets preserved and how. A more serious question is: who? I consider every zine or book I purchase to be a part of my own archive. We all have personal archives, but even now as an adult trying to find work that reflects experiences of people who look like me is still difficult. I know the work I need isn’t being distributed by the people with money, and that means finding it is harder, often based on chance. Today I emailed the director Debra A. Wilson, asking where I could watch The Butch Mystique and if there was any way I could obtain a copy through her. I so desperately want to hear and see these voices that it feels like a hole in my chest.

It’s very hard to survive a world that works hard to make you feel like you don’t exist, that you shouldn’t or that you do not deserve to. Even now, as we are sold and marketed representation, because that’s all it is: marketing. It enforces the loneliness of a crowded room. I am never not aware of a room’s whiteness. I am never not searching for something, anyone, to relate to. I think that is simply the human experience, but also bring in being black, bisexual, and transgender, and all the other things that shove me to a margin. As much as I try to celebrate those parts of my identity, they can be heavy, too.

I think this has accumulated to me having a hard time with this year’s Pride. As much as Pride is a riot before a celebration, I often struggle with it every year. I would not be writing this without coming home to my trans and LGBT identity, and in that I owe my life. But this year, with anti-trans bills, continuing anti-blackness and COVID-19, it feels as alienating as ever. It’s hard to not look at the crowds and play I Spy. So many white bodies, so many maskless in a crowd. I see people I care about, too. I envy that resilient joy and feel for the LGBT crip community so obviously left behind at the same time. I think of how anyone can become disabled at any time, and that the very structures we do have exist to make a disabled life a hard one. My continuing fear of long-COVID and of hurting immune-compromised people in my life keeps me masked in crowds. To see these Pride crowds, I just wonder how any of this is solidarity. I struggle with ideas of community when we pick and choose who matters, when we see who is prioritized, and who has the privilege to enjoy a public life over others.

A peer once asked me why I cared so much. This was brought on from struggling being on Toronto Island for a residency surrounded by white folks. I don’t know how to not see disparity and not feel it deeply. My astrological birth chart is shaped like a bowl, maybe that’s why I hold everything so deeply. I just don’t know how to live a life and not look at it closely, even if it makes me miserable. Sometimes looking can bring you joy too. It’s all about discovery, one way or another.

I really didn’t know where to go with this blog. I’ve been struggling with insomnia lately. I took out an old I Spy book on the Internet Archive and tried to claw back the feeling of searching I had as a child that was fun and fantastical. It wasn’t the same, you can’t recreate your bedroom carpeted floor and a laptop is no replacement for a very large book. Still, these objects formed me in some very important way. I am an observer, a witness. It can be heavy, but all I can do is continue to search, to create reflections of myself in my own work, and to try to spy with my little eye someone just like me.

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you in July.