TODAY'S WORD: FUGITIVE

Where does it escape from? ​From the Latin fugitivus, “one who flees,” related to fugere, “to flee.” There is motion in this word, not just in body but in state. A fugitive escapes not only from place, but from category. From what was imposed. From what collapsed. From what burned.

A fugitive is not only someone evading capture. It is a condition of instability. Of impermanence. Of refusal.
To be fugitive is to live in the interstice: neither here nor there, not quite legal, not fully safe, never fully seen.
Fugitive is a form of survival. Fugitive is a tactic.

Fugitivity arises where the law becomes the weapon.
Black fugitivity. Queer fugitivity. The undocumented, the dissident, the exile.
In these cases, the fugitive does not signify danger. The law does.
The fugitive reveals the violence of the system by the sheer act of slipping from its grasp.

There is fugitive art. Fugitive practices defy documentation. They resist capture. They choose decay over permanence, breath over market.
They are ephemeral as they refuse to stay here.

There are fugitive states within the body.
Moments of trembling. Dissociation. Friction.
To listen to the body is to track your own fugitivity, the parts that flee.
The body remembers.

Each of us is a fugitive from something.
Some flee a past. Some a family, a country, a memory, a story...
Not everything you create needs to survive.
Not everything you are needs to be seen.