from empathy by sarah schulman
"when the phone stopped ringing she perceived a peculiar silence. one of many. which one? there is a silence of perception. it wasn't that. thoughtless silence? forced silence? chosen silence? silence because you're listening. fearful silence. because the radio's broken. hesitation. when you don't say it because you don't want to hurt the other person. enraged silence. when you don't say it because it's not going to do any good. waiting. thinking. not wanting to be misunderstood. refusing to participate. self-absorption. when a loud sound is over. shame."
"'at jack's service this morning,' anna continued, as though all of this was normal, 'i realized that when i first comprehended the enormity of what was happening to my community, i only anticipated that i would lose many people. but i did not understand that those of us who remain, that is to say, those of us who will continue to lose and lose, would also lose our ability to fully mourn. i feel that i have been dehumanized by the quantity of death, and that now i can no longer fully grieve for each person."
"'my family seems so unreal to me. and when i am with them, i also am not real. i am a character in some movie and someone else wrote the script."
"she had long been the kind of person who explains herself regularly. it was part of a longstanding faith in being understood and a desire to apologize for every inadequacy. to ask forgiveness."
"only shame is the true indication of authentic camouflage."
rápidas manos frías/ retiran una a una/las vendas de la sombra/abro los ojos/ todavía/ estoy vivo/en el centro/ de una herida todavía fresca ~*madrugada* por octavio paz
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Saturday, February 8, 2020
dislocation
from in the dream house by carmen maria machado
"the late queer theorist jose esteban munoz pointed out that 'queerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence. . . when the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper, representing a straight present.' what gets left behind? gaps where people never see themselves or find information about themselves. holes that make it impossible to give oneself a context. crevices people fall into. impenetrable silence."
"we can't stop living. which means we have to live, which means we are alive, which means we are humans and we are human: some of us are unkind and some of us are confused and some of us sleep with the wrong people and some of us make bad decisions and some of us are murderers. and it sounds terrible but it is, in fact, freeing: the idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. it is simply a state of being -- one subject to politics, to its own social forces, to larger narratives, to moral complexities of every kind. so bring on the queer villains, the queer heroes, the queer sidekicks and secondary characters and protagonists and extras. they can be a complete cast unto themselves. let them have agency, and then let them go."
"later, you will learn that a common feature of domestic abuse is 'dislocation.' that is to say, the victim has just moved somewhere new, or she's somewhere where she doesn't speak the language, or has been otherwise uprooted from her support network, her friends or family, her ability to communicate. she is made vulnerable by her circumstance, her isolation. her only ally is her abuser, which is to say she has no ally at all. and so she has to struggle against an unchangeable landscape that has been hammered into existence by nothing less than time itself; a house that is too big to dismantle by hand; a situation too complex and overwhelming to master on her own. the setting does its work."
"the late queer theorist jose esteban munoz pointed out that 'queerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence. . . when the historian of queer experience attempts to document a queer past, there is often a gatekeeper, representing a straight present.' what gets left behind? gaps where people never see themselves or find information about themselves. holes that make it impossible to give oneself a context. crevices people fall into. impenetrable silence."
"we can't stop living. which means we have to live, which means we are alive, which means we are humans and we are human: some of us are unkind and some of us are confused and some of us sleep with the wrong people and some of us make bad decisions and some of us are murderers. and it sounds terrible but it is, in fact, freeing: the idea that queer does not equal good or pure or right. it is simply a state of being -- one subject to politics, to its own social forces, to larger narratives, to moral complexities of every kind. so bring on the queer villains, the queer heroes, the queer sidekicks and secondary characters and protagonists and extras. they can be a complete cast unto themselves. let them have agency, and then let them go."
"later, you will learn that a common feature of domestic abuse is 'dislocation.' that is to say, the victim has just moved somewhere new, or she's somewhere where she doesn't speak the language, or has been otherwise uprooted from her support network, her friends or family, her ability to communicate. she is made vulnerable by her circumstance, her isolation. her only ally is her abuser, which is to say she has no ally at all. and so she has to struggle against an unchangeable landscape that has been hammered into existence by nothing less than time itself; a house that is too big to dismantle by hand; a situation too complex and overwhelming to master on her own. the setting does its work."
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