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[worlds-otherwise-log]

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When I finally arrived at the door of no return, there was an official there, a guide who was a man in his ordinary life, or a dissembler. Exhausted violet, the clerk interjects. Yes, says the author. Violet snares. He arranged himself at the end of the story. Violet files. Violet chemistry. Violet unction. It was December, we had brought a bottle of rum; some ancient ritual we remembered from nowhere and no one. We stepped one behind the other as usual. The castle was huge, opulent. We went like pilgrims. You were pilgrims. We were pilgrims. This is the holiest we ever were. Our gods were in the holding cells. We awakened our gods, and we left them there, since we never needed gods again. We did not have wicked gods so they understood. They lay in their corners, on their disintegrated floors, they lay on their walls of skin dust. They stood when we entered, happy to see us. Our guide said, this was the prison cell for the men, this was the prison cell for the women. I wanted to strangle the guide. As if he were the original guide. It took all my will. Yet in the rooms the guide was irrelevant. The gods woke up and we felt pity for them, and affection, and love. They felt happy for us, we were still alive. Yes, we are still alive, we said. And we had returned to thank them. You are still alive, they said. Yes, we are still alive. They looked at us like violet; like violet teas they drank us. We said, here we are. They said, you are still alive. We said, yes, yes, we are still alive. How lemon, they said, how blue like fortune. We took the bottle of rum from our veins, we washed their faces, we sewed their thin skins. We were pilgrims, they were gods. They said with wonder and admiration, you are still alive, like hydrogen, like oxygen. We all stood there for some infinite time. We did weep but that is nothing in comparison Dionne Brand, Verso 55

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I lived and loved, some might say, in momentous times, looking back, my dreams were full of prisons in our narcotic drifting slumbers, so many dreams of course were full of prisons, mine were without relief in our induced days and our wingless days, my every waking was incarcerated, each square metre of air so toxic with violence the atmospheres were breathless there, the bronchial trees were ligatured with carbons some damage I had expected, but no one expects the violence of glances, of offices, of walkways and train stations, of bathroom mirrors especially, the vicious telephones, the coarseness of daylight, the brusque decisions of air, the casual homicides of dresses what brutal hours, what brutal days, do not say, oh find the good in it, do not say, there was virtue; there was no virtue, not even in me let us begin from there, restraining metals covered my heart, rivulets of some unknown substance transfused my veins at night, especially at night, it is always at night, a wall of concrete enclosed me, it was impossible to open my eyes I lived like this as I said without care, tanks rolled into my life, grenades took root in my uterus, I was sickly each morning, so dearly what to say life went on around me, I laughed, I had drinks, I gathered with friends we grinned our aluminum teeth, we exhaled our venomous breaths, we tried to be calm in the invisible architecture we incubated, like cluster bombs, whole lives waiting, whole stellar regions, discoveries of nebulae, and compassion from the cities the electric rains pierced us, the ceaseless bitter days folded like good linen, the phosphorous streets gave off their harmful lights we bit our fingernails to blue buttons we staggered at the high approach of doorways, plunged repeatedly to our deaths only to be revived by zoos, parades, experiments, exhibits, television sets, oh we wanted to leave, we wanted to leave the aspirated syllables and villages, the skeletal dance floors, the vacant, vacant moons that tortured us, when the jailers went home and the spectators drifted away and the scientists finished their work like a bad dog chained to an empty gas station, for blue blue nights, I got worse and worse, so troubling I would fall dead like a specimen, at the anthropometric spectacles on the Champ de Mars, the Jardin d’Acclimatation the mobile addresses of the autopsy fields, though I could see no roads, I was paid for losing everything, even eyesight I lived in the eternal villages, I lived like a doll, a shaggy doll with a beak, a bell, a red mouth, I thought, this was the way people lived, I lived I had nights of insentient adjectives, shale nights, pebbled nights, stone nights, igneous nights, of these nights, the speechlessness I recall, the right ribs of the lit moon, the left hip of the lit moon, what is your name they asked, I said nothing I heard the conspiratorial water, I heard the only stone, I ate her shoulder, I could not hear myself, you are mistaken I said to no one the chain-link fences glittered like jewellery, expensive jewellery, portable jewellery, I lost verbs, whole, like the hulls of almonds after consideration you will discover, as I, that verbs are a tragedy, a bleeding cliffside, explosions, I’m better off without, with vermillion, candles this bedding, this mercy, this stretcher, this solitary perfectable strangeness, and edge, such cloth this compass of mine, of earth, of mourners of these reasons, of which fairgrounds, of which theories of plurals, of specimens of least and most, and most of expeditions, then travels and wonders then journeys, then photographs and photographs of course the multiplications of which, the enormity of this, and drill-bits and hammers and again handcuffs, and again rope, coarse business but there some investigations, then again the calculations, such hours, such expansions, the mind dizzy with leaps, such handles, of wood, of thought and then science, all science, all murder, melancholic skulls, pliant to each fingertip, these chromatic scales, these calipers the needle in the tongue, the eyes’ eye, so whole diameters, circumferences, locutions, an orgy of measurements, a festival of inches gardens and paraphernalia of measurements, unificatory data, curious data, beautiful and sensuous data, oh yes beautiful now, of attractions and spectacles of other sheer forces, and types in the universe, the necessary exotic measurements, rarest, rarest measuring tapes a sudden unificatory nakedness, bificatory nakedness, of numbers, of violent fantasms at exhibitions again, of walks, of promenades at fairs with products, new widgets, human widgets, with music, oh wonders, the implications then early in this life, like mountains, already pictures and pictures, before pictures, after pictures and cameras their sickness, eye sickness, eye murder, murder sickness, hunger sickness, this serendipity of calculators, of footprints with fossils, their wingspan of all time, at crepuscules’ rare peace time, if only, like water, in daytime, no solace, so, so different from solitude, all solitude, all madness, so furious, so numerous, the head, the markets, the soles of the feet, so burnt, so thin and the taste, so meagre, so light-headed, the cloud flashes, the lightning geometry, the core of reflectivity so vastly, vastly vast the wait now, lumens of aches, such aches, the horizontal and the vertical aches of lightning, its acoustics, loud pianos, percussive yet strings and quartets, multicellular runnels yet and yet, the altitude of the passageway, its precipitation and grand arithmetic, the segments the latitudes of where, where and here, its contours, its eccentric curvatures, so presently, angular and nautical, all presently just fine my lungs, just fine, hypothesis absolutely, but just fine, why lungs, strange theory oh yes and the magnitude of jaundice, trenches, like war, continuous areas and registers, logarithms so unexplainable, rapid scales, high notes besides, anyway so thermal, atmospheric, wondrous aggressions, approximately here, elaborate like radiation and seismic, yes all over the bodies’ symptoms of algebraic floods, tiredness for one, weariness actually, weary with magnetic embryos petals, yes petals of sick balm please, now yes, for my esophagus, analgesics of indigo, of wires, of electric shocks, why eucalyptus leaves of course lemon grass, labernum, please, lion’s claw, remedies of cloves, bitter bark, still birdless though, worldless asthma with blueness, then music, gardens truthfully, truthfully nauseous with tonsured numbers, volumes of fibres, embroidery and hair nets of violence, blue, like machine guns, of course knives, extensions of blueness, all right then wherever same radiations, lines in the forehead, tapers, electrodes, invisible to the eyes, official hammers and corkscrews, official grass official cities now for appearances after all this, all these appearances, generous, for certain scraggly, wan, and robust appearances assignments and hidden schedules of attendance, a promise of blindness, a lover’s clasp of violent syntax and the beginning syllabi of verblessness

Dionne Brand, Ossuary I

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I think it is important that share the Western medical terminology with you, in that hopes that it can provide a common vocabulary, so we can better understand each other. But let me preface this with the fact that in the Native American Cree language, the possessive noun and verb of a sentence are structured differently than in English. So in Cree, one does not say, “I am sick.” Instead, one says, “The sickness has come to me.” I love that. So here is what has come to me.

But what if that is never the case? What if this will be with me for my entire life? What if I will always feel this pain? What if I never get over the abuse, the trauma? What if I will always have to take this medication, go to the doctor, use a can, spend portions of my life in the hospital? What if I will never be able to afford the therapies that peddle wellness for X number of dollars? What if I was born in a country devastated by globalization and imperial wars and will live there for my entire life? What if I always feel the trauma of my colonized ancestors? What if the violence against my people continues? What if my black friends continue to be shot in the street? [*feb 2, 2016: I’d like to amend this: it’s a mistake to say “my black friends,” because it presumes that they need to be my friend before I will care. This is not what I meant, and I’d like to change it to say “What if unarmed black civilians continue to be shot in the street?” JH]

What then?

This neoliberal directive to “be well,” to heal yourself, has got us all running around alone, thinking if we just did this and that and more importantly, bought X, Y, and Z, then and only then can we finally once and for all be well. I want to suggest that coping instead implies that trauma is embodied, that vulnerability is the default, that the struggle is real, and that all of us require constant care and support forever. Not just sometimes, but for our entire lives. And I want to insist that we cannot do this alone.

So, in the words of my other mentor Fred Moten, what’re we gonna do now? How are we going to cope? How are we going to care for each other?

Let me end by saying that I would not be alive and here tonight if not for a group of people, many of whom are in this room, who have made caring for me one of their priorities. When I am sick in the bed, the wheelchair, and even up until this very afternoon, they come over, cook me meals, drive me to the doctor, email and text daily to say “You can do it,” and show me a kind of care that none of the institutions of supposed wellness in this society have come close to. I used to think that the most anticapitalist gesture left had to do with love and desire, particularly love poetry. I had this idea that to write a love poem and give it to the one you desired was the most radical resistance. But now I see I was wrong. The most anticapitalist protest is to care for an other. To take on historically feminized, and therefore invisible, practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other. A radical kinship.

—Johanna Hedva

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“Something Like an Introduction: I tend to think with and through keywords, terms that recur in a writer’s body of work and words that appear rarely, even once. I am interested in mapping how words accumulate and remain isolated.

I have been trying to think with Audre Lorde’s work, to identify certain keywords. Difference is one, survival is another. Related to those is distortion. And the erotic.

Sustained thinking begins with creating an archive, gathering material with which to think. Writers often hide this gathering, as we are supposed to make public our engagement with texts and objects and situations in a digested form. To the extent that I can, I want to make the act of gathering as public as possible. That might do some work.”

Difference: An Audre Lorde Archive by KEGURO MACHARIA

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Verso 55 by Dionne Brand

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Christina Sharpe reading an excerpt In the Wake. On Blackness and Being

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Academician, Heal Thyself! by After Globalism Writing Group in Social Text

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Inside | Out presented by The Royal College Of Art

Tuesday 20 May, 6.45

Inside | Out explores the way lived experience is communicated and negotiated through film. By situating the viewer both Inside and Out of the frame, the series sets up a push/pull dynamic between filmmaker and audience, enabling both an immersive experience and a more detached, critical engagement. The first two screenings look at structures of power; where Navigations looks outwards to investigate the way urban structures condition and shape lived experience, Mediations directs its gaze inwards to examine the questionable relationship between artist filmmakers and their human subjects. Echoing this same internal/external relationship, the second set of screenings explores methods of cinematic communication. Where Introspections locates a feeling by considering the relationship between an inner state and an outer space, Transformations seeks to position the viewer within a shifting narrative, establishing a direct relation between artist and audience.

Introspections locates a feeling by considering the relationship between an inner state and an outer space. Collapsing and unfolding different times in different spaces, for each artist filmmaker, “it’s a feeling, not a place, but it feels like a place” – Thomas Ogden, Matrix of the Mind.

The screening will be followed by an informal Q&A with Tate Assembly Curator Andrew Vallance.

Black Rain, Semiconductor, UK, 2009, 3 min

Strange Space, Leslie Thornton, USA, 1993, 4 min

Ghost, Takashi Ito, Japan, 1984, 6 min

Collapse, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Cyprus/USA, 2009, 9 min

White Dust, Jeff Keen, UK, 1972, 33 min

Future Past Perfect pt. 04 (Stratus), Carsten Nicolai, Germany, 2013, 5 min

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‘The moment of real poetry brings all unsettled debts of history back into play’ 💥 Amazing installation by #baselabbas and #ruanneabourahme @carrollfletcher (at Carroll / Fletcher)

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No more waiting.

No more hoping.

No more letting ourselves be distracted, unnerved.

Break and enter.

Put untruth back in its place.

Believe in what we feel.

Act accordingly.

Force our way into the present.

Try. Fail this time. Try again. Fail better.

Persist. Attack. Build.

Go down one’s road.

Win perhaps.

In any case, overcome.

Live, therefore.

Now...

Now (2017) by The Invisible Committee

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Now (2017) by The Invisible Committee

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Preface

Knowing I am from a place I’ve never been makes me into you. A settler in Canada. The backdrop is always there – behind me. Palestine is there. “You keep following me,” I imagine saying under my breath. But Palestine is also beside me: always a thought in fruition, like a companion for life. And sometimes I feel as though it is in me, creeping up from my stomach, getting caught in my throat. Palestine is pain. At times, Palestine is facing me. I see. There is nothing there. Too much is there.

“May amnesia never kiss us on the mouth.” (Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme)

That is the way I live Palestine – as a memory to come, as a memory in the making. Memory is where I come from. Palestine’s story is summoned through enunciation: Through what I see, how I read, what I say, how I say what I say. There is rigour in performance:

“The great potency of potentiality.” (Clarice Lispector, Água Viva)

This is pre-personal. Uttering the words, “I am Palestinian,” is an act of love. Uttering the words, “I am a prison abolitionist,” is an act of love too. Sometimes I confuse the two. After all, it is in practice that counts:

“Could it be that what I am writing to you is beyond thought?” (Clarice Lispector, Água Viva)

The practice of saying what is me, in the actual, realizes a you. Palestine is you. A Positioning, Not a Question by Nasrin Himada

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“How to Steal a Canoe,” Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg).

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Zong! As told to the author by SETAEY ADAMU BOATENG by M. NourbeSe Philip