In the latest queer issue, Kima Jones wrote about holiness and bodies and Harlem and memory in AD 2012. We asked her questions about all of these things:

1. Talk a little bit about spaces that we can’t traverse, or the ones we cross all too easily.

My first experience with forbidden space was, as a child, reading the story of the tower of Babel with my grandmother. Two things happened that shaped my perception of language and authority: 1. Not only did God confound language, but He scattered the people around the world. 2. When I asked my grandmother why God would do such a thing, she snapped the bible shut and told me not to question God.

That day I learned language was both powerful enough to erect a city toward the seat of God and make my grandmother turn her head away from me as if I had slapped her with my open hand.

I had enough good sense not to ask her anything further. Anything more would have corrupted that space. That day I learned how to watch my words, choose my words and grow my words upward to the Lord.

2. What makes these spaces holy?

The waiting area in language is the holy space. The space between asking and receiving. In that space things grow toward each other out of a yearning, even if they aren’t supposed to. It is the air between my lips and the lips of another when we lean in for the kiss. We may not be sure, but we need something, we are asking something of that space, and we can only get to it by going through.  Continue reading →