Alexis Penney: #BlessedBe

The Spiritual Crossroads
of Post-Drag Priestess / Punk / Yogi Alexis Penney

They may be shy, but Alexis is not quiet. At least not when you consider their book, musical albums, drag career, yoga practice, and wildly prolific catalog of daily life. This is, of course, already a rather abbreviated summary of a modern mystic. What follows is a transparent collection of portraits + selected words, most of which are gathered from a medium many of us would consider too pedestrian to even be bothered with in any serious way: social media.

Alexis’s Facebook status updates and Instagram selfies are brilliant and beautiful, hilarious and wise, surprising and absurd, and dance – probably shirtless – the line between highbrow and lowbrow.

October 13, 2016 at 1:37am

This is political. This is spiritual. I’m done chasing doubts and fears around. I’m done trying to complete myself when being whole for me is about being open and never complete. I’m done chasing dick that doesn’t get it. I’m done feeling less worthy when friends don’t get it. I’m done pining to be cuffed and pregnant when I know I’m not really going to be the one that decides whether I’m ready or that’s necessary. I’m done questioning whether I am ready. I’m ready. . . I’m going to get richer and more famous. It won’t take relatively much to engineer a serious come up for me and my queer family. And we will change the world with it. And that’s really it.

Realize myself. Hold space for others doing the same. Help the rest find their path to themselves. That’s art. That’s music. That’s holistic movement. That’s community. Let’s do it.

It’s just like you wanna talk about what’s problematic, you better be prepared by knowing exactly why you’re problematic to start. I am hella problematic in so many ways; I’ve been told and I see it. Has to start there.

March 23, 2016

I’ve had a weird day – still grateful. Been thinking a lot lately how pretty my eyes are. Actually every eye I’ve ever taken the chance to get to know is beautiful.

October 20 at 5:42pm

Also, you know what feels fucking amazing, especially when you’re convinced of your infallible rightness? Apologizing anyway. Forget that it’s more constructive in the long run. It’s just one of the most empowering things on a personal level.

October 23, 2016

…So I think the practices and the practice of teaching can be incredibly powerful for marginalized groups which is why I basically gave 3 years of my life teaching at a donation based program predicated on broad accessibility, because in spite of valid critique of white western yoga I’ve seen first hand how transformative these practices can be for oppressed people and what powerful tools of resistance they can be.

From Window, 2013

And suddenly I found myself trying to wrap my head around the fact that we wouldn’t ever hang out again. Such a beautiful person gone. I tried to respect her decision. Suicide has marked so many people I know. I railed against it for years, but those were the years before it came to seem like a viable option in my mind. It’s scary to never once realistically think about killing yourself and then suddenly and yourself contemplating it every single day.

It’s like when I was a kid and first made the connection between my brain and my nervous system. I lay on the couch and willed my leg to creep to the edge of movement, but not actually move. It was maddening. I guess that’s how I feel about suicide. Standing near a window, or waiting for a train, I see and feel how easy it would be to will myself to just do it, and my brain creeps right up to the edge of willing my body to do it, but doesn’t quite. I’ll never do it. I feel a grudging sense of survival. I’m here, I’m alive, I might as well live this life and live it well, but boy is it bleak sometimes. I don’t blame Mark but I miss her.

I’m feeling some wild emotions today. I wanted to say never doubt your faith, but actually doubt the hell out of your faith, listen, and let pain be information to refine your growth and direct your path. Within doubt lives the real power of my faith. Everything may not happen for “a reason,” there is probably not a plan, but there are patterns within the spirals and everything is connected, that seems to be the crux of it for me.