here's hoping people never stop asking

04/20/23

Here is a familiar picture: a girl surrounded by people she knows opens her mouth and shuts it again, the way one does with a shoe-box of old things that are precious only to the one who owns them. This is a self-imposed silence that emerges from understanding that a braided string, a misshapen crystal, and a blackened eraser stabbed 23 times have no worldly purpose. But with the profound solitude of loving something that no one else loves comes the lifelong necessity of loving that something enough to make up for the solitude. This is an ultimate truth. But most days it will feel like a burden. This is the other ultimate truth.

Sometimes there is a dull pulse in my ears which speaks of the absurdity of gravity: how all things must eventually fall, like apples, like arrow-shot birds, like people who’ve climbed to the top. It is as much a scientific fact as it is a personal doomsday clock (in fact there is a good deal of overlap between the two). But when you bear the responsibility of loving something, you cannot particularly afford to fall. It’s about pride. Or maybe pride is the bandaid-word for shame. Either way, your eraser parodies of Roman dictators are still waiting for you to come home, so come home you must.

But yes, some days, you will not want to come home. For instance, the day you come to the realisation that you exist purely as a convenient concept to most people you know is possibly crushing, depending on the person who inadvertently induces this realisation. Doomsday science pulls you back down to Earth—after years of believing that you’re more than just a figment of other people’s imaginations, your feet finally touch the ground. There is soil caught uncomfortably between your toes. Most people will never know this. In fact, you understand now that most people probably forget you even have toes.

I really believe now that to him, I’ll always be 17 years old, bright in useless ways and clumsy with my mouth and heart and hands. Forgiving to a fault, laughably predictable, and always, always beneath him. And I believe now that to them, I’ll always be a female option before I am my own person. It will never matter to them what I like to read or what keeps me awake at night or what that idiotic crystal meant to me when I was ten. And I believe now that to them, I am just an accommodating, one-dimensional idea attached to a four-syllable word.

They don’t tell you how hard it is to resist throwing out the whole goddamned shoe-box. But you know you’d regret it. Sure, it’s terribly old and it’s kind of musty and useless, but it’s yours. Even if no one gives it a second glance, even if they throw it down and step on it and spit on it, it’s yours. It hurts when they don’t see you as a person. But I am not an idiot who opens her shoe-box to people who don’t want to understand a thing. Closing my mouth is an act of pride, not shame. Precious things should be kept safe for those who love them, and to hell with those that don’t. This is my favourite ultimate truth.

the inherent intimacy in dying of laughter together

There’s this TikTok trend about seeing yourself in the lives and photographs of relatives who passed before you were born. I look a lot like my grandmother’s brother Robert who suffered a traumatic injury at birth and died of the measles in 1950 when he was only 11. We have the same eyes, same big dark brown eyes with long eyelashes, same round face, same thick and wavy dark hair. We looked exactly alike when we were babies. He never gained the ability to walk or talk but great grandmother loved him so much and was so devastated when he died. My grandma told me how much I looked like him. Apparently when I was a child, I’d see photos of him and say “Is that me?”.

He never got the chance to grow up due to a disease that wouldn’t have a vaccine for another 13 years. Due to the medical malpractice at his birth, he was robbed of the chance to do a lot of things boys his age in his era loved to do. Run, holler, catch frogs, climb trees, play cards. But for every day of his 11 years on this earth, he was with his mama who loved him so deeply. He got to meet his baby sister, who loved him for his gentleness and quiet comforting company. He got to eat delicious home cooked meals everyday. He got 10 Christmases, 10 beautiful Virginia summers.

He lives on in me. His memory lives on in me. His face, so like my own face, smiling at me from photographs.

normal people (2020) / spiracle - flower face (2022)

in the spirit of "o'brien doesn't actually suffer the most, it's just that all his suffering takes place in special Suffering Episodes": a complete ranking of ds9 characters by how much they suffer

(including recurring guest stars but not villains. i don't care how much gul dukat suffers. he could get hit by a fucking bus for all i care!!) 1. kira nerys. undefeated galactic suffering champion. literally goes back in time to find out if her mom died in a concentration camp when she was a small child like she thought and somehow the answer she gets is, to her, EVEN WORSE THAN THAT. o'brien could never.

2. odo. lab experiment childhood, spends 5 seasons pining tragically for the station’s most eligible terrorist, seeks his family only to find out they're genocidal maniacs, every small innocent being he tries to parent either dies or runs away, he has to return to said family to end a war! odo suffers so much actually??

3. benjamin sisko. loses his wife, becomes an unwilling messiah, forced to leave his family (the most important thing), etc.

4. miles o'brien. ok fine sure he does suffer a lot. not like kira does tho!!

5. garak. most of his suffering is pre-show but that suffering is BAROQUE. and then daddy never tells him he loves him and he indirectly causes his mother’s death

6. nog. after 6 seasons of minimal suffering, our baby boy suffers a LOT

7. jake sisko. not counting "the visitor" (it was a different timeline!). if the show put Jake through any additional suffering, i would wail and cry. His primary sufferings are pre-show (mom's death) and end-of-show (dad is gone and can't say when he'll return), but they are significant. at least he has, and loves, a wonderful stepmom!

8. kassidy yates. SPEAKING OF. her primary suffering is going to jail for the standard federation prison sentence (6 months, which is also what garak got for attempted genocide!!!!!), but then also losing her beloved husband to the celestial temple like almost immediately after, which is kind of a lot

9. keiko o'brien. a lot of miles’ suffering is hers also, and also she gets possessed by a demon after spending the first few seasons trying to find a new fulfilling job despite her husband moving her, a botanist, to a barren space station on which all life withers

10. jadzia dax. happy-go-lucky sex worm who has never experienced a "problem" until gul dukat throws a death basketball at her at age 35, so idk it evens out

11. julian bashir. gets kidnapped a lot and has a backstory so angsty that it's hard to tell whether he's even technically the same person he once was. HOWEVER, he's a goofy lil sexual harasser which makes it very easy to overlook his suffering!

12. worf. virtually all of his suffering is his own fault and he universally responds to it by creating more suffering for his own perverse ends. however, he does get disgraced from his people (his fault), lose his wife (not his fault but also why was she the only person left on the station when she literally FLIES THE SHIP most of the time??), and refuses to ever have fun (his fault)

13. leeta. perky and happy. in a great marriage. loves her stepson! unionized her workplace! however she is not at the bottom of this list because she is (a) a child of the occupation and (b) has to put up with fuckin quark

14. ezri dax. contrary to her frequently expressed beliefs, many things are easy for ezri

15. quark. when he suffers it's hijinks

16. rom. rom's character development is entirely positive. he goes from being the put upon idiot brother to the self-actualized leader of his people who has a son who loves him and a beautiful wife. the worst thing that happens to him specifically is probably when he masturbates so hard he almost dies and even then the result is he becomes a hero to labor in both his world and ours. things go ludicrously well for him at every turn. he is the winner of ds9

We should also consider if the inhabitants of the mega-sites consciously managed their ecosystem to avoid large-scale deforestation... Archaeological studies of their economy suggest a pattern of small-scale gardening, often taking place within the bounds of the settlement, combined with the keeping of livestock, cultivation of orchards, and a wide spectrum of hunting and foraging activities. The diversity is actually remarkable, as is its sustainability. As well as wheat, barley, and pulses, the citizens' plant diet included apples, pears, cherries, sloes, acorns, hazelnuts and apricots. Mega-site dwellers were hunters of red deer, roe deer, and wild boar as well as farmers and foresters. It was 'play farming' on a grand scale: an urban populous supporting itself through small-scale cultivation and herding, combined with an extraordinary array of wild foods. This way of life was by no means 'simple'. As well as managing orchards, gardens, livestock and woodlands, the inhabitants of these cities imported salt in bulk from springs in the eastern Carpathians and the Black Sea littoral. Flint extraction by the ton took place in the Dniestr valley, furnishing material for tools. A household potting industry flourished, its products considered among the finest ceramics of the prehistoric world; and regular supplies of copper flowed in from the Balkans. There is no firm consensus from archaeologists about what sort of social arrangements all this required, but most would agree the logistical challenges were daunting. A surplus was definitely produced, and with it ample potential for some to seize control of the stocks and supplies, to lord it over others or battle for the spoils; but over the eight centuries we find little evidence for warfare or the rise of social elites.

a description of talianki (located in modern day ukraine), a neolithic site from 5,700 years ago (inhabited from roughly 4100 to 3300 bc) from the dawn of everything by davids: graeber and wengrow

once again this book is fantastic - and one of its main theses is that "the agricultural revolution" and some of the conclusions we draw from it are, largely, not true.

the development of farming in human societies is a much much longer and more "playful" process than popular narratives would have us believe. 'agricultural revolution' suggests an on/off switch almost. and the way it's usually taught sees agriculture being "invented" and then spreading like wildfire to take over the globe - only then allowing for true cities and the "necessary evils" they entail. this simply isn't true. an urban, farming society is not automatically doomed to bureaucracy, inequality, and exploitation.

all across the world the archaeological evidence points to the domestication of plants taking literal thousands of years longer than it "ought to." and then, even when the domestication of a wild plant was complete there isn't an immediate rise of huge fields and class stratification (as the popular narrative goes). again - in the magnitude of multiple thousands of years. we have generations upon generations of humans with farming know-how who don't immediately begin a march of politics and inequality precipitated by farming.

agriculture isn't humanity's curse no matter what the memes and capitalists say. we are not doomed to our current ways - we can imagine, we can build, we can create new ways of being. the past is the present is the past. and fuck you capitalism and doomed "human nature" debates. and read the dawn of everything <3

i just want to stay on the phone with you

1. roland barthes; a lovers discourse | 2. bojack horseman; the view from half way down | 3. mary szybist | 4. art by danny lai lai. lyrics by hozier; as it was | 5. boygenius; ketchum, id | 6. when harry met sally |

machines are human, too.

porter robinson, sad machine || sun yuan and peng yu, can't help myself || boston dynamics || the washington post || new york post || boston dynamics || tumblr || phillip k dick, do androids dream of electric sheep? || plainsight || wikipedia, turing test || kurt vonnegut, breakfast of champions

Stop yearning so desperately for the next best thing that you forget to appreciate the present. Sitting in a brand new BMW wishing it was a Bentley, chasing some elusive end point, and losing the magic of today. You do not have to keep pursuing, acquiring, moving. There can be satisfaction in contentment. There can be satisfaction in the now.

The last speakers of ancient Sparta