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Kathy Acker at the gym, 1984. Photograph by Steve Pyke.

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There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails.

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shelley duvall r.i.p. 2024

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On September 13, 1955, Carl Van Vechten photographed the fairly well unknown James Baldwin who had just published his first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was already published, and his next, Giovanni’s Room, would surprise everyone the following year with its white gay protagonist living in Paris, nothing African American about it. You can see his wry smile anticipating that coming surprise.

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1. A Primer for the Small Weird Loves - Richard Siken / 2. The Crane Wife - CJ Hauser / 3. Automat - Edward Hopper / 4. Red Doc> - Anne Carson / 5. Melancholy - Edvard Munch / 6. The Village (2004) / 7. So We Must Meet Apart - Gabrielle Bates and Jennifer S. Cheng

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I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.

Jeanette Winterson, from Gut Symmetries

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Talk to me (2023) // Kate Zambreno // Pádraig Ó Tuama // Allie X // Helene Delmaire // Citlali.haro // urs fischer // Kesha // Jan Švankmajer // Warsan Shire // Caboodles // @/ yearningheart

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oh shit !!!!

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—Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE WORLD.

—Jacques Rancière, The Intolerable Image from The Emancipated Spectator (2009); tr. by Gregory Elliott.

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We don't have to be perfect humans. We can say or do the wrong thing and still try again tomorrow. I hope a lot of us keep trying to meet the ideal of an ethos of creation and coexistence (not just human either), rather than an ethos of destruction and death. I hope you bear witness however you can. If you are a writer, write. If you are an artist, make art. If you weave or sew or do beadwork, weave, sew, arrange the beads or words or thread toward beauty. Whoever you are, no matter what you are feeling, put something of what you know and love toward a larger idea of existence that does not depend on violence. Make rage songs. Make your love apparent, especially to vulnerable and scared humans around you. Rise as an activist when and where you are able. Make noise. Make trouble. Bake and distribute bread. Plant gardens of food and flowers and share them. Share resources. Vote for an ethos of creation rather than an ethos of killing and death. Build housing. Feed people. Heal people. Care for and protect children and those more vulnerable than you. Fill the streets. Carry water. Donate and redistribute wealth. Love your babies. Love other people's babies. Give land back. Call Congress. Call the birds and the animals and the fish. Bring the life songs, the heart songs, the art songs. Bring the wailing. Take breaks. Take care of yourself and others. Take turns building, holding, carrying, and giving the fire of life to others.

—Lidia Yuknavitch, from "Fire: Be the Revolution" (Poets & Writers, January/February 2024)

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It's that I shall pass because of the rhythm into its paroxysm — I shall pass to the other side of life. How can I tell you this? It's terrible and threatens me. I feel that I can no longer stop and I'm scared. I try to distract myself from the fear. But the real hammering stopped long ago: I'm being the incessant hammering in me. From which I must free myself. But I can't: the other side of me calls me. The footsteps I hear are my own.

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Fugitivity […] is a desire for and a spirit of escape and transgression of the proper and the proposed. It’s a desire for the outside, for a playing or being outside, an outlaw edge proper to the now always already improper voice or instrument.

Fred Moten

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Hélène Cixous, from The Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous; “Black Sail, White Sail”

Text ID: There’ll be no hymns to our glory. / History has cut our throats.

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Gabrielle Bates, “Dear Birmingham” from Judas Goat, Tin House, 2023

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Louise Glück, Averno; from ‘October’

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The Black Cat 1934 | dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

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"Bodily autonomy for all, by any means necessary"