Been scrolling and am overtaken by strong feelings of gratitude, love and adoration for partnership. All hail the magic number of two. I miss you even though I've seen you 40 minutes ago and you're kinda being late for our groceries spree. But I forgive you entirely because I know you'll come back, and our bodies can continue touching and life is bearable that way. I hate that coupling is so ingrained in patriarchy, so misused and misunderstood. Commitment to one other is simply an affirmation of the ever changing nature of the human individual, an affirmation of the infinity that can be found in a single you or me. Please, surface and support partnership, demonstrate it's not about enclosing someone at home, but about continuously falling in love and caring for a body that's as much a reflection as an endless tale.
A rich lobster was perusing a catalogue of different shades of coral, trying to decide the best one for his new set of bed-sheets when he was called by his boyfriend shrimp who, swollen by jealousy, couldn't stop talking about another shrimp's gorgeous coat he'd just seen.
Everything connects these days. I'm being fed generous spoonfuls of research and knowledge and queer camaraderie. People want to change things, people want to tell different stories. It sounds so simple and redundant to write but I just think back to the words of adrienne maree brown about needing to recruit more people, needing to belief that others can be convinced. So simple words are needed. I feel that I need to do the work of vocalizing/showing/describing the feminist, postnational, queer or simply lesbian way. Maybe flashing my way of life, the private way that feels so right. I've read it somewhere recently (my memory seems to fail me today or simply to many paragraphs have been skimmed) that private lives are political lives as much as the public ones. It all returns to the notion of life=art. Art is what you live, how you treat your friend, how you make your bed, how you speak to the stranger. Everything happens in encounter and so little of encounter is archived. But some of it is and can be. Myriam's words echo in my head 'move towards action, don't think for too long, this is needed.' So I think of printing words and folding paper, placing all that around the city. I think about indexing together and studying books together. What else should I be thinking about? I struggle with visibility. I can only convince one person at a time. There is so much to learn and discover and it's getting late and my head is full. How did Octavia Butler did it, writing at 3 am at night? I hate that life gets busy at time, I hate when someone tells me they're busy all the time. I wish to learn about feasible, structural change. I don't want to make art about problems. I want to be able to affect the systems that cause problems, bend them my way or make them burst. But again, so much of that work comes down to sharing information. Right? I want to follow the traces of Cait McKinney, follow the works of the feminists of the past and see what am I already continuing, or what can be continued. I need that history. Others need that history too. Find the alter egos, the lesbians, keep craving knowledge, keep craving the discovery that will prove this world wrong, keep showing everyone there is many, many words, so humble down and surrender all weapon right now.
Left alone and feeling cranky, stuffy in the world of career writers birthing pristine babies and life continuing. Not receiving any response. At least you could get something, pretty please (?)
I've been enjoying the night-time, the opacity of it. I like the sense of invisibility it allows. Visibility torments me. It might be one of the most demanding aspects of life in this century: the need to expose yourself to sell yourself, or to prove innocence, compliance, normality. How paradoxical that we can live under all-encompassing surveillance yet home violence remains a private matter.
There were many floors and it was presumed we only rented one yet I found fucking bodies everywhere. The agreement was made of air perhaps. It felt like an undercover sex house which took us by surprise. It wasn't a negative surprise. Just something we didn't suspect right away.
I'm out of time today, and the cerebral space seems hallow. I got stuck in a hail storm for twenty minutes, standing by a luxury restaurant and watching runners continue to run through the park event though it must have hurt them to do so. The distinction between the weather and my body got blurry. It was as if the hail was literally coming out of me, like I'm causing it. But then it's also a communal responsibility. Just like in the sex house where the element of surprise didn't erase the fact that we all agreed to live this way. We all agreed to enable licking each other on every floor. We all agreed to the potentiality of an intruder, knowing the intruder would be very welcome to join the act.
I need a hand week, a few days of hand work, I'm overfueled with information. A deep processing. I need to crochet and stretch and spin the tufting sit, and take care of home and stretch some more. I wish you a week of hand.